Far Future 1: Heritage
by The Fink
Summary: Someone has a score to settle, and he might just have found the perfect weapons... [Follow up to the Identiverse Saga NOW COMPLETE]
1. Secrets

Disclaimer: Only going to do this once so here goes. That which you recognise is borrowed from BVE, without permission, but no harm, no foul and no money made. All hail the mouse! Ben Johnson is borrowed with grateful thanks from Ekat. Everyone and everything else does belong to me. Please ask me first before borrowing.

Many, many thanks to Vanessa (beta'ing) and Chris (test reading) for helping to shape this story. Many, many, many thanks to Gamine for doing all of that and more. You three guys are the best. *genuflects*

Timing: For those who've not yet caught on, this is ten years after the end of the first Identiverse series.

Welcome to Far Future.

  
  


~*~

  
  
  
  


Secrets

  
  


Alice slowly wandered home. High School was, she decided, just the same as Middle School only the work was harder. It didn't help that she had no real friends within her class. She'd never really been able to make friends easily and the two friends she had made in Middle School had both gone to a different High School, one moving out of state while the other had been accepted to a prep school in San Francisco. 

She kicked out at a stone on the sidewalk. She'd always been more at home in the company of adults. She wanted to blame her mother for it, for being over protective of her as a little kid, but knowing what her ex-father was like, Alice could understand it. She remembered the last time she'd seen her ex-father, being held firmly by the scruff of the neck by the man who'd become her dad. That night had been one of the scariest of her life, but she wouldn't trade the outcome of that night -- or the following four months for anything. Even if they had condemned her to summer school, they had given her a dad. 

Rounding the corner, she came upon a sight that dragged her out of her introspection and made her freeze to the spot in shock.

There were bronze robots teeming all over the mall parking lot.

"Target acquired."

Before Alice could process that comment, four of the robots had grabbed her and had started to drag her away.

"Help!" she screamed, struggling against their grip, but to no avail.

"Hey, bolt brains!" yelled a new voice. "How about you pick on someone your own size?"

Alice managed to twist in their grasp to see the source of the yell. It took several seconds for her to identify who she was looking at, but when she did, she felt her jaw drop open. _Power Rangers!_ This was the first time anyone in Silverhills had seen Power Rangers since... Alice had no idea. Probably almost as long as she'd been living in Silverhills. There were three of them. A woman in pink trimmed with white and a man in red trimmed with white who were standing either side of a second man in a darker red uniform that was trimmed with black.

Recognition dawned as to who the middle ranger was: The Quantum Ranger. A faded memory surfaced of having seen him before, of having had her life saved by him before, but Alice couldn't bring the details to mind. It was a long time ago. She got the feeling it was him that had spoken. She was sure that it was him who added,

"Let the girl go."

"Mission updated," announced one of the robots holding her in a flat, mechanical monotone. "Take out all hostile forces. Mission must be completed." It started to drag her away while the other robots surged towards the rangers.

"Let go of me!" Alice screamed, struggling.

"You will come with me," the robot intoned.

"Over my dead body!"

Alice got the impression of a red blur passing over her head and then there was the Quantum Ranger standing in front of her and the robot holding her.

"Let the girl go," the Quantum Ranger repeated.

"Hostile force must be taken out," the robot answered. It shifted its grip on her and brought its weapon to bear.

It fired.

Alice screamed.

The Quantum Ranger dodged the energy blast by diving forwards towards the robot.

She screamed.

She didn't see what happened next. Only felt herself being moved, then something connected with her head and everything exploded into pain before fading swiftly to black. The last thing she was aware of was someone cursing volubly.

  
  


~*~

  
  


"See? Eric, you worry too much."

Alice muzzily realised the speaker was her brevet uncle, Wes. Why was Wes here? What had happened? Why did her head hurt so much? Slowly the details came back to her, as did the details of her surroundings. She was lying on something cold and hard and lumpy -- asphalt, she guessed -- although her head and shoulders were being pillowed in someone's lap.

"And if it had been Lexia or Rick?"

The nearness of that voice told Alice whose lap she was lying on: Her dad's. Opening her eyes, she found herself looking up into Eric's still-worried looking face.

"He's got you there, Wes," said a third voice and Alice realised that not only was Wes present but Jen too.

"Alice?"

Alice managed to bring her attention fully to her dad. "Wha'...?"

"How are you feeling?" Eric asked.

Alice thought about it for a couple of seconds, then answered, "My head hurts."

There was a strange expression on Eric's face at that but Alice felt too dizzy to work it out. 

"Alice, honey, I need you to look at me." Jen stepped into view and crouched beside her. "How many fingers am I hold up?"

Alice struggled. "I don't know," she admitted.

"Concussion," Jen diagnosed.

"Bad?" Eric asked.

"Not major but not mild," Jen answered. "Alice, if your dad helps you, do you think you can sit up?"

"Think so." With Eric's help, she managed to sit up, although the effort made her feel dizzier.

"OK." Jen had produced a bottle of something from somewhere. "I need you to drink this down -- I know it doesn't taste good, but it'll make you feel better," she promised.

"OK." Alice reached for where she thought Jen was offering the beaker of the 'something' but in the end it took Eric guiding her hand before she succeeded in taking hold of the right beaker. Jen was right -- it didn't taste good, but a moment or two after swallowing the last drop, the dizziness started to subside.

"Better?" Jen asked.

Carefully Alice nodded. "Think so."

"Better take her straight home," Jen advised. "We can hold a council of war later and Wes and I can oversee cleanup here."

"Thanks." Eric gently swung Alice up into his arms and carried her across to one of the Silver Guardian SUVs that were now parked in the mall's parking lot. "OK?" he asked, carefully balancing her on one arm while opening the SUV door with the other.

  
"Think so," Alice mumbled, feeling suddenly sleepy and tired. "Why did they want me?"

"That," Eric answered, gently setting her down on the passenger seat, "is something I plan on finding out, and fast."

  
  


~*~

  
  


Alice lay in bed, listening to the murmur of chat coming from the kitchen. Although she couldn't make out many words, she knew the tone to be serious. It was probably about the attempted kidnapping, she decided. _I am not letting them decide my fate without me getting a say here! I'm not a kid any more._ Quietly, she slipped out of bed and padded out of her room.

In the hallway she could hear the voices better.

"You heard what Lucas said." That was Wes' voice.

"I know what Lucas said." That was Eric -- he sounded frustrated. "I'm just saying, you both saw them. What would you call 'em if they weren't Cyclobots?"

"Eric's right." That was Jen. "They were Cyclobots. But what worries me is what Lucas said."

"The only man who knew how to build a Cyclobot was Frax." Wes again. "But he's dead."

"Is he?" That was her mother.

"Kim?"

"Did anyone actually see a body?"

"This isn't the movies," Eric objected.

"Very true, but in my experience," _What experience?!_ "if you don't see a body, you can't be certain they're dead."

"That's Hollywood."

"It's experience," her mother answered firmly. "I talked to Rocky -- he was telling me about the Machine Empire."

The Machine Empire? What would Uncle Rocky know about them? Alice wondered, venturing closer to the kitchen.

"Oh?" said Wes, bemused.

"They thought they'd taken out Gasket and Archerina, only to have them show up again about a month after Zedd and Rita had put pay to the rest of the Machine Empire."

Huh?! Alice reached the doorway and peered between through the crack between door and door-post. Eric and her mother were sitting at the table, facing the door, while Wes and Jen were sitting at the table but with their backs to the door.

"What are you saying, Kim?" Jen asked.

Alice watched as her mother shrugged. "I don't know -- I guess you guys know more about Frax than I do. I'm just saying...if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...just maybe it's a duck, you know?"

"It's been ten years," Eric mused. "Why now?"

"And why is he after Alice?" Jen wondered. "I could understand it if he had a grudge against me and Wes but..."

"He released Venomark and Mechanau, didn't he?" Eric asked. Wes nodded. "I seem to remember I played a pretty big part in getting those two defeated. Besides, who says he isn't after you guys too?"

"Gee ya know who to turn to for comfort around here," Wes murmured.

Alice saw her dad smile a little. "Sorry -- but you know what I mean."

"Eric's right," said Jen.

"Twice in one evening -- must be a record," her mother joked.

She saw Eric roll his eyes. "It's pick on Eric Myers day again, isn't it." Everyone else laughed. Even Eric smiled a little.

"One thing's for sure," Wes mused as the laughter died away. "Those weren't ordinary Cyclobots we were dealing with this afternoon."

Huh?! For the second time Alice stared, stunned. There hadn't been any Silver Guardians' present in the parking lot until after the battle was done. Had there? She frowned. Now she thought about it, there had been something very, very familiar about the three rangers. It hadn't hit her before because she'd been initially petrified, then dizzy, but thinking it over now, the way the trio had been standing was definitely reminiscent of someone...three someones she knew. And the most familiar was the Quantum Ranger.

"...picked a bad time to get brains," Eric was commenting. "There was nothing I could do."

Alice felt chilled. No. He couldn't mean that. He just couldn't.

"You managed to pull the blow," Jen consoled.

"Not enough." Numbly Alice realised Eric looked upset. It was the same expression he'd been wearing when she'd come round. "I could have killed her."

"No...no..." The final seconds before she'd been knocked unconscious suddenly played through her mind in sharp clarity. The robot had moved as the Quantum Ranger had aimed a blow, but in ducking to the left, the robot had dragged her straight into the path of the blow. She could see the gloved fist heading straight for her head, moving in almost slow motion. She struggled in the robot's grip, twisting and trying to avoid but to no avail, the punch connected with the side of her head, just below and behind her temple. She heard the cursing start and knew why it was familiar, it was a tirade heard often albeit softly, around the house whenever her dad...her stepfather had done something he considered to be particularly stupid.

"Alice..."

HE was standing in front of her now. HIS own words ringing in her ears. _I could have killed her._ She was dimly aware that her mother, Wes and Jen were also standing there but the only person that mattered was HIM.

"How could you?" she found herself murmuring. "You promised you'd never do that."

"Alice it wasn't my fault..."

A sudden surge of anger overrode the shock that had been so far dictating her responses. She lashed out with fists and feet, not caring that most of her blows were skilfully deflected. "You promised me!" she screamed.

"Alice..."

"Shut up!" she yelled. "You **hit** me -- you're just like Dirk." Through the tears and the anger, she saw HIS face pale at that accusation.

"Alice this wasn't your father's fault," her mother cut in.

"He's not my father!" Alice hissed, lashing out again, one hand catching HIM hard across the face while both feet connected against HIS shins one after the other. "He's no better than the monster who is...and how can you take his side? He **hit** me!" Alice turned a furious gaze on her mother. "You must really like getting beat up but I sure as hell don't. It's never going to happen again. I'm not gonna let it." With one last blow, one that she knew had hurt HIM; she fled back to her bedroom.

  
  


~*~

  
  


There was a long moment of stunned silence between the adults in the wake of Alice's flight. It was eventually broken by the sound of Eric groaning softly. Jen looked at him and could see where the physical blows had landed but the pallor and haunted expression highlighted that it wasn't just physical pain. He'd been beating himself up over Alice getting hurt anyway -- and to hear Alice make the accusations Jen guessed he'd been making against himself... Jen didn't think Eric had looked as shattered as he did now -- certainly not in the whole time he'd been married to Kimberly.

"I'm going after her," she murmured.

Without waiting for anyone to answer, Jen headed along to Alice's bedroom. She didn't think Alice was likely to run away, but beyond that she had no idea. Trying the bedroom door handle, Jen was unsurprised to find it was locked.

"Alice?" she called.

"Go away."

Jen winced. The tone was tightly controlled, as if Alice didn't dare let it be anything else. "Alice -- please..."

"Go. Away."

"Alice..."

"You're on **HIS** side," Alice hissed. "Go away."

Jen winced again. "I'm not..."

"Go away."

  
  


~*~

  
  


Alice closed out the rest of Jen's attempts. There was no way she was going to talk to anyone just yet, least of all someone who knew HIM...her stepfather...Eric...

Oh God what a mess.

Alice curled herself around her pillow, burying her face into it to muffle the sob that welled up. She wasn't sure what -- or who -- she was upset with. Eric for not telling her about being a ranger? Herself for needing the rescue? Eric for not being who she thought he was? Her mother for trying to play peacemaker? Herself for being a complete idiot? Herself for freezing this afternoon? Herself for what she'd just said to Eric? Eric for not fighting back?

Maybe I should have talked to Jen...

No! Jen's bound to be on HIS side...

I wish none of this had happened...

  
  


~*~

  
  


The morning rolled around far too soon. Having spent most of the night crying, Alice felt like death warmed over and the last thing she felt like doing was facing either of her parents. She had, she reflected, been a complete idiot the night before and they would both be well within their rights to give her the lecture from hell before grounding her from now until hell froze over: She'd physically **attacked** her dad!

How dumb am I?

And the things she'd said... She cringed.

I can't believe I told him he was like Dirk...

The incident that had sparked the whole scene -- the attempted kidnapping and subsequent rescue -- had pulled itself into context. Now that she was calm and rational, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Eric had certainly not intended what had happened. The memories of the whole attack were finally clear and she knew that the robot -- Cyclobot -- had deliberately put her into the path of the blow. That wasn't Eric's fault. It had been an accident.

But eating that crow isn't going to be fun.

Alice sighed and slowly rolled out of bed. Thankfully this was a Saturday otherwise she would have been seriously late for school. A glance at the clock told her it was approaching eleven o'clock. She frowned. It was unusual for her mother to allow her to sleep in like this, even when she was employing a 'cooling off period' because of Alice's temper.

If anyone's like Dirk round here I guess it would be me... she mused ruefully.

Yawning, she crossed to her bedroom door, unlocked it, opened it and stopped dead.

She had time to take in the impression of a tall, lanky man wearing an old, grungy raincoat and an absurd fedora hat before he sprayed something into her face. Whatever it was acted fast and even as he was replacing the aerosol in his coat pocket, Alice felt the world start to spin. Her knees buckled and she collapsed forwards into the man's waiting arms.

"Nighty-night."

  
  
  


_TO BE CONTINUED..._


	2. Shattered

Shattered

Quietly Eric moved around the kitchen, making himself a slice of toast. The sound of footsteps behind him alerted him to the fact that he hadn't been quiet enough. For a second, he tensed.

"It's seven o'clock and a Saturday," Kimberly mumbled. 

Eric relaxed. It wasn't the person he was hoping to avoid. "Sorry -- I didn't mean to wake you."

"Felt you get up," Kimberly answered. "Always wakes me." He heard her start to cross the kitchen towards him. "What're you doing?"

"I'm..." He sighed and turned to face her. "I thought I'd get out of here before..." He trailed off meaningfully.

Kimberly frowned for a moment trying to work out what he meant, but as his meaning filtered through her sleep-fogged mind, Eric watched her expression mutate into annoyance. "Alice is the one in the wrong -- you did everything you could."

Eric sighed. _Did I? _He shrugged. "I guess."

Kimberly shook her head vehemently. "No 'guess' about it. Wes and Jen were clear about what happened. You **did** all you could. It was not. your. fault."

Eric turned back in time to catch the carbonised slice of toast as it popped out of the toaster. "I know."

"And still you're the one giving ground." Kimberly sounded angry.

Eric winced. "Kim -- she's right," he said.

"No she's not!"

Slowly, Eric turned back to face his wife. "Kim -- she **is** right. I promised I would never hurt either of you and regardless of the circumstances yesterday afternoon, I broke that promise."

Kimberly stared at him, incredulous. "Eric, yesterday was an accident!"

Eric shook his head. "I know that here," and he tapped the side of his head, "but that doesn't make me feel any better. **I **need to deal with it myself before I can face Alice."

"She'll have calmed down by now..."

"Kim, I came within a hair's breadth of killing her yesterday," Eric found himself snapping. "I still don't know how I didn't. How can I face Alice when I can't face myself?" Eric winced as Kimberly took an involuntary step backwards. "I'm sorry. I..." But he trailed off because there was nothing else he could say.

It was Kimberly's turn to shake her head -- but she had no words either.

Eric sighed and headed towards the door into the garage, pausing to collect his keys from the bowl on the counter.

"Where are you going?" Kimberly asked, her voice neutral.

Eric winced again. _Two for two._ "Work," he replied, not looking at Kimberly.

"Is that your answer?" Kimberly yelled. "Something bad happens to me, I must therefore spend more time at work?"

Eric spun round to face her once more. "No!" he retorted.

"You're running. Again."

Before he could quite control the impulse, he took a step towards Kimberly. "I am **not** running and I stopped burying myself in my work the day I met you and Alice."

"Well that's sure what it looks like," Kimberly shot back, anger written large on her face.

"Kim, I am not running. I..." Eric pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to rein in his temper before he did something else he'd regret. Quieter, he continued, "I'm going into work to use the gym and to see if Zaskin has anything to report on what we cleared up yesterday." 

She stared at him.

"Kim, I want to know what is going on. I want to know who it is that tried to abduct my daughter and put her through yesterday afternoon, and I want to know where that piece of scum is hiding so that I can go and pound whoever it is into the dust." His shoulders sagged. "Because at least that way I'll be doing some good."

Without offering Kimberly the chance to reply to that, Eric swiftly headed into the garage and made his escape.

~*~

Kimberly folded her arms around herself as Eric departed, half wishing Alice could see how bad he felt -- and being totally glad that neither Alice nor her brother John had witnessed the fight.

She knew that Eric had not slept well -- point of fact, nor had she -- but she hadn't truly realised just how badly he was hurting. Hadn't realised, she noted, because even after ten years of marriage, he still found it hard to let her in.

It was something that Kimberly knew and accepted as part of Eric. He'd spent a lot longer almost completely alone, with no-one he could talk to, than he had knowing he had people he could trust. She grimaced -- understanding it didn't make it any easier to live with at times like this.

It didn't make it hurt any less.

She couldn't help but hope she would hear the sound of the SUV returning. Couldn't help but hope to see Eric return in the same kind of hurry that he'd departed in, to apologise to her and to...

No -- that wasn't Eric.

Spontaneity was not something he did well. When he was ready, they would talk this all through and he would apologise...and the next time would be easier. Kimberly smiled faintly to herself. Eric was nothing if not stubborn. When he set his mind to do something -- like changing the habits of a lifetime -- he did his best to do it. There were backslides -- this one perhaps being the biggest -- but he had improved.

And the only reason he'd improved was for her.

Which was why she owed it him to be patient.

Kimberly sighed. In the meantime, she had to talk to Alice -- and that was not something she was looking forward to.

~*~

"That's mine!"

"Lexia go away!"

"Give it back!"

"Lexia go away!"

"But that's mine!"

Wes rolled over and looked at Jen, who was apparently still asleep. "Guess it's up to me to go adjudicate on this particular outbreak of World War Three?"

Jen cracked an eye open. "Would you?"

She sounded tired. "Are you OK?" Wes asked, tuning out the continuing arguments, judging no-one was in imminent danger of dying.

"Just..." Jen sighed. "Exhausted," she admitted. Her eye slid shut once more. "Deal with the kids...I'll be OK."

Wes studied her for a few moments. "Sure?"

"Uh-huh."

Wes sighed and rolled out of bed. Maybe Jen was just tired -- after all, the previous day had been anything but restful. Whatever the robots had been, Cyclobots or whatever, they had **not** been easy opponents. Particularly given the ten-year break between ranger outings, a couple of search-and-rescue operations not withstanding. But then again, he mused slipping on his robe and heading towards the source of the squabbles, Jen had been tired a lot recently. A fact that he was well aware of, and something that was quietly giving him cause for concern.

Then he entered the living room and all other worries evaporated in the face of the scene his eyes fell on.

His seven-year-old daughter, Lexia, was sitting in the middle of the floor in floods of tears. Rick, his ten-year-old son, and John, Eric and Kimberly's nine-year-old, were sitting either side of her. Rick was holding Lexia's Barbie. Both he and John looked a little nonplussed at the tears.

"He took my doll!" Lexia howled.

"Just wanted to..." Rick began.

Wes sighed. Time to be daddy...

~*~

The punching bag bore witness to Eric's state of mind.

It had been a long time since Ben had seen the bag so abused. More than ten years, that was certain, even allowing for Alice's more recent temper tantrums. He sighed.

"It's not what you're thinking, Ben," Eric stated without even looking round.

Ben blinked. "How'd you know it was me?"

Eric stilled. "Fifty-fifty choice between you and Jen. Figured, since it's a Saturday and you're on shift, it would be you." Slowly he turned around. "But this isn't what you're thinking."

Ben just met Eric's gaze. "So we're not standing in the gym and you haven't just been beating the hell out of a poor, defenceless punching bag because you're frustrated as hell over what happened yesterday." Eric had the grace to look faintly sheepish. "So how **is** Alice today?"

Tiredly, Eric moved towards a convenient bench and sat down. "I don't know. Haven't seen her today to ask."

Ben winced. "Is this 'I'm not prepared to face her yet and explain to her how she got hurt' or is this 'she found out and she's pissed at me'?"

"Neither." Ben just looked at Eric. "Both." Ben's eyebrows shot up. "I don't know." Eric picked up a towel and buried his face in it. "It's complicated."

"What did she do last night?" Ben asked. "Compare you to that scuzz-bucket, no-good, lazy-ass son-of-a-bitch Dirk Cunningham?" From the way Eric's shoulders tensed at the question, Ben knew he was on target. "It's not true, man, and you know that."

"But I could have been."

Ben froze. "What?"

"I said I could have been. There but for the Grace of God and all that -- Dirk Cunningham is how I could have ended up." Eric dropped the towel and met Ben's gaze. "I was half way there already when I met Kim."

For a long second, Ben stared, incredulously, at Eric. "Man -- you have more issues than Oprah!" Eric opened his mouth but Ben shook his head. "Nu-uh. No way are you gonna justify that one to me. You're gonna hear me out. For a change." Eric's mouth closed with a snap. "You are not, nor have you ever been, in the entire time I've known you, a low down, low class, white trash, wife beating, welfare grabbing, beer swilling, porn watching asshole. And if you can't tell the difference, I'll spell it out: You seriously think if you were like that sack o'shit Cunningham you'd be sitting here worrying about something you had no control over? 

"He **meant** to hit Kim when he hit her; he **meant** to hit Alice when he hit her. You? You got used by whoever's runnin' them damn robots. I know what I saw," Ben added, "and that goddamn lame-ass robot moved Alice right into your path. If you'd really been like Cunningham, you think that woulda made a difference? You think he'da pulled his punch? Not fuckin' likely. And," he continued, as Eric opened his mouth again, "what's more, Alice **knows** that. So does Kim." He paused. "And so do you, somewhere in that thick skull o' yours."

"So you're saying I'm being an idiot and I shouldn't feel like the worst kind of shit?"

"Oh man are you so full of shit!" Ben groaned. "That is **not** what I'm saying." Eric stared at him. "If you didn't feel guilty about it, you wouldn't be any better than Cunningham. But you do, and that's good. Now set it aside." Eric's stare turned incredulous. "I mean it. Yesterday was a goddamned accident. It was not your fault. It doesn't suddenly mean you've turned into..."

"I get it!" Eric cut in.

"Do you?" Ben retorted.

"Yes."

"Or, when I walk outta here to go see if Zaskin's got news, are you just gonna get up and start pounding the hell outta that bag again?" The faintly sheepish vaguely mulish set to Eric's expression told Ben everything he needed to know. "I see."

"You see what?" Anger now flashing through Eric's eyes.

"I see that you're too busy beating up on yourself to actually think about this."

"What do you mean?"

"It's obvious." Ben crossed his arms. "Those robots were sent to nab Alice, right?" Angry but puzzled, Eric nodded. "So what's to be gained by risking her getting killed? You wanna kidnap someone; you don't wanna kill 'em. You want 'em for something." Eric made a winding motion with his hand. Ben growled. "Oh for fuck sake, Eric, you're not dumb. It's not Alice they want to hurt, it's you. And you are goddamn letting them win!"

~*~

Wes quietly put the finishing touches to the breakfast tray. The children had been easily pacified -- the disputed doll had been returned to its owner, which settled Lexia, while Rick had been instantly contrite -- although Wes knew peace wouldn't last. And if Jen was tired, the last thing she'd want to deal with was a trio of almost hyperactive children. Besides which, John needed to go home -- assuming the coast was clear, of course.

So Wes planned to take the children out to the park for a couple of hours so that they could run off their excess energy, then he would take John home and in the peace and quiet their absence generated, Jen would be able to get some rest.

Casting his eye over the tray of toast, jelly and orange juice, he decided it was done. He picked it up and carried it through to the bedroom. Jen was lying in bed, although the second he walked into the room she opened her eyes.

"What's this?" she enquired.

"Breakfast," Wes replied.

Jen wriggled into a sitting position, allowing Wes to put the tray down in her lap. "Why?"

Wes smiled as he started to get dressed. "Aren't I allowed to spoil my wife from time to time?"

"I'm all right," Jen promised, lavishly spreading jelly over a slice of toast. And that was when Wes realised what the 'problem' was. The jelly he'd absently put on the tray -- and the jelly that Jen was now eating with great appetite -- was gooseberry. It was a substance that under 'normal' circumstances neither he nor Jen liked. Except when she had been pregnant. And now, so it seemed.

"Uh-huh." Wes pulled on his jeans and tested his theory. "And do you want me to lay in a stock of anchovy paste and gherkins?" he asked, naming the other two things she'd had major cravings for.

Jen blushed and grimaced at the same time. "You know."

Wes sat down on the bed beside her. "I guessed. Is it certain?"

Jen shook her head. "I've got a doctor's appointment on Monday -- I didn't want to say anything until I was sure. Particularly after yesterday."

Wes sighed and snagged one of her hands, giving it a squeeze. "I wish you'd have told me -- how long have you suspected?"

Jen looked vaguely guilty. "A couple of days."

"If you'd have told me, we could have done something different yesterday. Taylor or Ben..."

"Can't hold my morpher," Jen cut in. "And if it is Cyclobots..."

"We'll find a way around it," Wes finished, firmly. Jen opened her mouth to protest. "Don't argue. You know as well as I do that morphing and pregnancy do not go well together." That had been a lesson they had learned during her pregnancy with Rick.

Jen glared. "I was all right for the first six weeks." Wes just gave her 'The Look'. "OK, four weeks," she admitted sheepishly.

Wes dropped a kiss on her cheek. "It's OK," he said gently. "We will find a way around it."

"Is this going to involve me doing all the paperwork for the next nine months?" Jen asked in resignation.

Wes grinned. "Well that's always an option, but I think we'd both prefer not to take it."

"Damn straight."

"We'll talk about it on Monday -- once we know for sure," Wes promised, standing up. "Meantime, I'll take the kids to the park and you can have a nice, lazy Saturday morning."

Jen offered him a smile. "Thank you."

~*~

Kimberly paced the kitchen. She was dressed now and ready for the day. At least, that was what she tried to tell herself.

In truth, she was far from ready. The prospect of talking to Alice was unpalatable to say the least. In her, Kimberly could see so much of her ex-husband, and not just in terms of looks, either. Kimberly knew that her own temper tended to be explosive when provoked but Alice's was far worse -- and if anything, it was getting worse as she got older.

Kimberly could see where Alice was heading. Could see it clearly. Could see the trouble heading their way if she didn't learn to curb her temper better...and felt powerless to stop the onslaught. When Alice was calm, she was perfectly rational -- she even knew that her temper was a problem. It didn't seem to help. She'd promise to try harder or do better...and the next outburst would be worse than the previous one.

Kimberly closed her eyes and groaned.

She couldn't do this.

But not doing this was akin to giving up, and that wasn't an option either.

With a sigh, she opened her eyes again and glanced at her watch. Coming up to eleven o'clock. She couldn't put this off any longer.

But as she headed towards Alice's bedroom door, the doorbell rang. Kimberly smiled wryly. Saved by the bell?

She reached the front door and opened it, only to find herself looking up at a lanky man with an over-prominent Adam's apple and glasses, wearing a decidedly grungy looking raincoat and an outlandish fedora hat. Kimberly stared.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

The man smiled. "Mrs Myers?" he enquired, Adam's apple bobbing rapidly.

"Ye-es."

He pulled a canister from his coat pocket. "Nighty-night." Before Kimberly could question the odd remark, he sprayed the canister's contents into her face and everything faded to black.

~*~

Wes watched with a smile as John, Rick and Lexia bounded into the park.

It was early and they had the play area to themselves, which was just how the trio liked it, and for a second it was like any other visit to the park.

In the next second, everything changed.

Cyclobots materialised all around them and everything that followed seemed to happen in slow motion.

Wes started forwards, yelling at the children to run, but a whole pack of the bronze robots grabbed him, wrestling him to the ground.

Lexia screamed.

One of the other 'bots grabbed her. Another grabbed a completely petrified Rick.

John tried to run, amply demonstrating that he'd inherited his father's innate ability to function even under tightest pressure, but the wiles of a nine-year-old were no match for the artificial intelligence that the Cyclobots now seemed to be wielding, and he too was captured.

"Targets acquired."

The Cyclobots vanished in a haze of teleportation sparkles, leaving Wes alone...

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Lonely

Lonely

Ben was one of only a handful of people who could get away with saying what he'd said to Eric but that didn't necessarily mean Eric appreciated it. Largely because Ben hadn't bothered to hide the fact that he thought Eric was being a first class idiot.

__

And the worst of that is he's probably right.

Eric shook his head as he entered Dr Zaskin's lab. He'd grab a quick report then head for home to try and mend a few fences.

"Eric -- good morning," said Zaskin, barely even looking up from his research.

In spite of the situation, Eric only barely managed to suppress a smile. Michael Zaskin hadn't changed at all in the last ten years. He still had all the enthusiasm for a new research puzzle as a child given a new toy. It only surprised Eric that he'd looked up for long enough to identify who'd just walked into the lab.

"How's it going?" Eric asked.

At the direct question, however Zaskin did look up. "Well," he replied thoughtfully, "I'd concur with your assessment...the assessment that you, Wes and Jen made yesterday, these are or -- more precisely -- were Cyclobots."

"You mean before we trashed 'em," said Eric dryly.

Zaskin grinned puckishly. "Trash would be a good description."

"Oh well, next time they're trying to abduct my daughter I'll make sure to leave one intact for you."

Zaskin winced. "Sorry." Eric waved the apology off. "Anyway. What I **would** say about them is that they're **not** the same variety of Cyclobots as you were facing when Ransik was here."

Eric stared at him. "What do you mean?"

For answer, Zaskin just tossed one of the chipsets that were cluttering up the workbench in Eric's direction. Bemused, he caught it and flipped it over. "That," said Zaskin, "is a Maplin Schmitt Trigger chipset."

"And I am looking at it because...?"

Zaskin grinned. "Because it's a chipset currently in production." Eric just looked at the scientist. "OK. What I mean is, what you're holding is current tech. It's not future tech -- and in the entire time Ransik was present in this time, I never, ever pulled anything that 'antiquated' out of his robots. Plenty of stuff that was so far ahead of its time it made my eyes cross, sure. But something as off-the-rack as a Maplin chipset..." Zaskin shook his head.

Eric frowned. "You're saying the bots were built in this time?"

"Yep. Looks that way."

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh great."

"If it's any help to you," Zaskin continued, "I can run some serial numbers through the system and see if any of this lot've been stolen, when and where?"

"Gah. The way this is going, the components'll have been bought legally." Eric sighed and shook his head. "You might as well check, though."

Zaskin nodded. "I might be able to find something even if they're not stolen," he offered. "I have a friend at Maplin who can probably tell me where these chipsets were bought."

Eric nodded. "That might or might not be helpful...gotta be worth a shot." With another sigh, he turned to leave the lab. "Thanks Michael."

But even as he was reaching out for the door handle, his cell phone started to ring. With a grimace, Eric paused and unclipped the device from his belt. Looking at the caller ID, he noted that it was Wes. That didn't automatically mean something was wrong, but... 

He accepted the call with a growing sense of disquiet. "Wes -- what's up?"

"The shit has hit the fan," came the response. Then followed the words Eric didn't want to hear. "Whoever this is has just abducted Rick, Lexia and John and there was fuck all I could do to stop them."

~*~

Kimberly groaned.

Her head was pounding and sundry bruises were making themselves felt. The real question was what on earth had happened? Squinting, she realised she was lying on the floor just inside the front door. Well at least that mean she hadn't been...

...kidnapped!

Kimberly forced herself to get to her feet.

Alice!

She groaned again as she finally reached her feet. Whatever the guy had used to knock her out, it had been strong. She could taste it in her mouth -- a revolting, chemical tang that was combining itself with the way the world was now gently tilting and swaying around her to make her stomach heave.

__

No time...

Using the wall as a guide, she stumbled along to Alice's bedroom door and felt her heart sink as she realised the door was now wide open.

"Kim!"

Kimberly paid no attention to Eric's shout. All she could do was state in dumb horror at the empty bedroom. Alice was gone. It was the final straw as far as her stomach was concerned. As her stomach started to empty itself of its contents, she found her knees giving out and she collapsed to the floor again.

"Oh God...Kim..." She felt Eric's hands on her back as he crouched beside her. "Oh God..."

"Couldn't stop it..." she found herself sobbing. "I couldn't stop him..."

Eric pulled her into an embrace, trying to sooth her. "It'll be...we'll find her...them..."

The words weren't lost on Kimberly. For the first time, she looked at Eric and for the first time saw the signs of fresh heartache. "What else?" she asked, her voice hoarse and strained.

She could only watch as Eric closed his eyes. "Whoever this is," he whispered, "they've got John, Rick and Lexia too."

"No!" Kimberly screamed. "This can't be happening!"

"We'll find them, Kim. We're gonna find them."

"No..." She clung to Eric as if he might suddenly vanish too. "No..."

~*~

The kitchen was crowded, Eric noted as he leaned against the work surface.

It would have made more sense for this meeting to have taken place at SGHQ, but he didn't want to leave Kimberly alone. By the time she'd finished crying, the only option Eric had was to put her to bed and that was where she was presently, sleeping off the effects of her break down. If for no other reason, he vowed that he was going to find whoever had done this was going to pay dearly for the catastrophic effect they'd had on Kimberly.

A look at Jen and Wes, who were sitting at the kitchen table, as they had been the night before, revealed that they felt no better about the situation than he did. Jen, in particular, looked barely one stage away from the emotional collapse Kimberly had suffered, while Wes' expression was tinged with the pain of badly bruised ribs. The Cyclobots had got him good when they'd snatched the triumvirate.

On this side of the table were seated Ben and Taylor. Eric couldn't see their expressions, but from long experience he knew that both would be inwardly outraged, even if it didn't show outwardly. Ben was still in uniform, since technically he was still on duty, although Eric knew well that Paul Miller and Mara Reed -- the two sub-commanders of Ben's squad -- were now in charge of the day shift.

At one end of the table, Zaskin looked grim. With him was Mr Collins who likewise looked forbidding. He absolutely doted on his two grandchildren and Eric knew with certainty that if Collins found out who the kidnapper was before anyone else there, the kidnapper wouldn't live long enough to regret it. Looming like some avenging angel over both Collins and Zaskin was Rocky. Aisha had come over with Rocky but she was upstairs keeping an eye on Kimberly. It hadn't been a hard decision on Eric's part to call the other man in. He was almost a surrogate brother to Kimberly, and right now, he was the only piece of familial support that Eric could bring in. He'd have liked to have called either Cawdron or Peterson but that would have meant explaining the future aspects of the situation.

__

And the last thing we want to tell someone who's highly connected with the US Military, even if he's not serving any more, is that time travel's not only a possibility but a reality, Eric mused with a faint shake of the head.

The final person present, Lucas, wasn't physically in the kitchen, but was attending via holoscreen, and looked about as impressed with matters as everyone else.

"They're definitely Cyclobots," Zaskin was arguing.

"That's impossible," Lucas objected. "Frax is the only being to have built them, and we know that he's very, very dead."

"How?" asked Ben.

Lucas offered a tight smile. "Because we have his robotic body firmly impounded here in the bowels of Time Force Technical. And," he added, "before anyone points out that Time Force's record keeping can be a little...sketchy, I went down and physically checked it was there before speaking to you. Trust me, it's there, I've seen it with my own eyes."

"How sure are you that Frax was the only being building Cyclos?" Wes wanted to know.

"To the point where we in this century haven't seen an active Cyclobot in a good ten years," Lucas replied. "Up to the point when Ransik escaped to 2001, they were a common sight and a big nuisance."

"But he could have left the blueprints somewhere?" suggested Taylor.

Lucas sighed. "We're looking into it."

"And that doesn't explain why there're 'bots running around **here**," said Rocky.

"Actually, it might," said Zaskin. "The 'bots are all being built here. If someone had found the blueprint and somehow travelled back in time with it..."

"If," said Lucas. "That's something else that we're looking into here. I'm expecting Hawking to give me a report any time now."

"Lucky you," Jen murmured with sarcasm.

"Make sure you have plenty of caffeine," Wes contributed.

Eric judged the comments to mean that both Wes and Jen had met Hawking and hadn't enjoyed the event. Lucas' expression confirmed that point of view.

"Thanks guys, I know who to come to for sympathy, huh?" Lucas looked at someone beyond his own holoscreen. "Thanks Marissa -- is that from Hawking?"

"Yep." Marissa's answer floated over the holoscreen's audio, although she didn't actually appear on screen.

Eric watched as Lucas leaned forwards to pick up a datapad that she'd presumably set down on his desk. "What's the news?" he asked.

Not looking up from the document he was scanning, Lucas slowly shook his head. "Not good. Not good at all."

"Anyone surprised?" said Rocky dryly.

Lucas ignored the comment and looked up from the datapad. "According to this," he said, "Silverhills in 2013 is a regular little hotspot of temporal anomalies. And worse," he continued with a grimace, "there are all the signs that someone's made at least one unauthorised trip from this time to yours."

"Which means what?" asked Collins tightly. "We have another Ranisk running around here?"

Eric noted the grimace now entrenched on Lucas' face. "That's not the worst of it, is it?" he said.

Lucas shook his head. "No."

"So...?" prompted Jen.

"Someone in Technical," said Lucas, "has just 'noticed' the theft of one of their projects."

Eric wondered if he'd heard Lucas right.

"What do you mean 'has just noticed'?" asked Wes.

Lucas shook his head. "I'm not sure -- that's literally what it says in this report. I'll find out in a moment. The bottom line is the data and prototype for one of TF Tech's weapons projects has been stolen."

"Don't you guys **have** security procedures?" Taylor asked pointedly.

"We do," Lucas agreed. "And like everything, if someone wants to play the system, there's always a way."

"Anyone want to take a bet where this weapons project's gonna show up?" Eric enquired.

"I don't bet on certainties," said Wes. "Lucas, what was the project?"

Lucas gave a groan. "I don't know. If it was still Doc Bennett in charge of Technical this would have come in a comprehensive report and I'd be able to tell you exactly what was going on. As it is..."

"Bennett retired?" Jen asked.

Lucas shook his head. "Not exactly. Look, I'm guessing you guys don't want to hear about internal politics right now."

"So what **can** you tell us?" Taylor demanded.

Lucas offered a humourless smile. "Right at this moment? It's the blind leading the visually challenged. I'm in the same boat you guys are. I'm sorry."

"And you're the one who can just look this stuff up," said Ben.

"Not as easy as you'd think," Lucas answered, "and right now..." He shrugged. "When this conversation's done, Trip, Nadira, Marissa and I are going to start breaking heads, believe me. Something **big** is going on."

Eric watched as that information was digested by everyone in the room.

"And you think this," and Rocky made a vague gesture as if to encompass the whole room, "is connected to the shit flying around where you are?"

"Major Kendall -- Dr Bennett's here to see you, urgently," came Marissa's voice.

"Got to go," said Lucas. "The second I have more information for you I will be in touch. You have my word on that." He hesitated a beat. "Good luck."

And with that, the holoscreen winked out.

"I see, said the blind man not seeing at all," Ben muttered.

"Well that was...less than helpful," contributed Zaskin.

"Nope," said Eric, folding his arms. "On the contrary. I think that told us a lot."

Taylor craned her neck so that she could look in his direction. "What?"

"For one thing," said Jen, "that there's future involvement in this mess."

"For another," Wes added, "that there's an unknown and probably powerful weapons system likely to show up here sometime soon."

"For a third," Eric put in, "there's a faction in Time Force who aren't playing by the rules."

"For a fourth," Collins contributed, "Lucas has just stopped playing by them himself."

"What makes you say that?" Rocky enquired.

Collins smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. "I hardly think 'breaking heads' is in the Time Force operational manual when it comes to getting information."

"Where does it leave us?" Ben asked. "What are we going to do?"

"We," said a soft voice from the kitchen doorway, "are gonna find them."

Eric looked up and found himself looking at Kimberly, Aisha standing just behind her. She looked pale. There were huge, bruise coloured smudges beneath her eyes. But there was a hard determination in her expression that told Eric there was no way she was being left out of whatever was planned.

Eric didn't even need to think about what to do. He crossed the kitchen and gently pulled her into an embrace. "**We** will," he agreed. "I promise."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	4. Lost

Lost

Alice felt as if her head had been filled with fog. She knew who she was -- knew her name was Alice Myers -- but that seemed to be the only thing she remembered. Everything else was just lost in a swirling mist of confusion.

"Are you all right?"

The voice was kindly and soft. Alice opened her eyes and found herself looking up at a lanky man with an over-prominent Adam's apple and glasses. His whole expression was one of concern. "Who are you...and where am I?" she asked.

"My name is Dr Louis Ferricks," he replied, "and you're in my laboratory -- I'm afraid it isn't very comfortable, but...are you all right?"

"I'm...not sure," Alice admitted. "How did I get here?"

"I brought you here after..." He trailed off, chewing his lip.

"After?" Alice prompted.

"I rescued you from them. Time Force."

Alice blinked. At the phrase Time Force a few more memories burst through the fog. Of a trio of rangers...who all had **some** sort of connection to her. But the rest of that memory was still shrouded. "Time Force?" she echoed.

"They're an evil organisation," Dr Ferricks responded, shaking his head sorrowfully. "I'm not sure what they were doing but...I believe it might have been some sort of experiment."

Almost as if cued, Alice started to remember a little more. She vaguely remembered a small room and a blue-green light that seemed to hurt. "W...what did they do to me?" she asked softly.

Dr Ferricks slowly shook his head again. "I don't know, I'm afraid." He paused a moment. "I took the liberty of conducting a medical scan while you were unconscious and there didn't seem to be anything medically wrong -- you appear to still be a healthy woman in your early twenties."

Every fibre of her body rejected that last comment. "But I'm not..." Another memory surfaced. "I'm sixteen!"

Dr Ferricks' expression rapidly descended into shock and horror. "Oh my..."

Alice swallowed. "Oh my?" she echoed, knowing with certainty that she wasn't going to like what was said next.

Dr Ferricks wrung his hands together in apologetic fashion. "I am afraid that Time Force has used illegal technology..."

"What do you mean?"

Dr Ferricks offered a sigh. "You've been artificially aged. It is a very illegal procedure and...quite irreversible."

~*~

Rick felt strange.

He was cold. He was lying on his right side. His head seemed to be over full with information. He could hear someone -- a male, adult someone -- groaning.

It was that last that Rick focused on. The groans sounded oddly familiar to his ears and relatively close at hand, but when he opened his eyes there was no-one there. He frowned.

It slowly trickled into his conscious mind that **he** was the source of the groans.

But...that wasn't possible.

He was a kid.

He forced himself to sit up. The movement felt awkward, as though he was...larger? Rick swallowed. That was impossible. And then he looked down at himself.

And screamed.

~*~

Lexia shivered as she came round.

She was cold. It felt like she was lying directly on some metal surface. Like she wasn't wearing any clothes...which was silly. She remembered getting dressed. But just to prove it to herself, she opened her eyes...

And screamed.

~*~

John lay where he was, eyes closed, taking in as many details of his surroundings as he could.

From what he could hear, he was in a small room, on his own. He was lying on his right side, on something hard and cold. His body seemed to ache, his head in particular. It wasn't precisely pain, but it wasn't comfortable, either.

Distantly, he heard a woman scream.

He frowned. It sounded like Lexia's scream -- God knew he'd heard that sound often enough! -- but there was something different about it. Something more...grown up?

But she was just a kid.

So either it wasn't Lexia's scream or something truly freaky was going on.

Given his own situation, John was inclined to believe the latter.

Deciding he'd picked up everything he could without opening his eyes, he opened his eyes. Yep, small room. Yep, tile floor -- that accounted for the cold and hard he'd already noted.

The next thing was to move into a sitting position, which he did, albeit clumsily. That was enough to set alarm bells ringing in his mind. There was something wrong. Something very wrong. His body suddenly felt bigger than he remembered.

Rather than look down at himself, John lifted a hand into his field of vision. 

And nearly screamed.

The hand he was looking at -- the hand that had obeyed his command and moved into his line of sight -- wasn't his. It belonged to someone bigger. Older. A man's hand. Yet it **had** to be his.

Suddenly very, very scared, John looked down.

~*~

"I'm afraid," Dr Ferricks continued, "that you weren't alone."

Alice blinked, a cold trickle of fear inching its way down her spine. "What do you mean?"

Dr Ferricks sighed. "There were four of you that I rescued from Time Force's grasp."

Alice felt sick to the pit of her stomach. "Were they three kids?" she asked. "Little kids?"

Dr Ferricks shook his head. "I'm afraid not." He hesitated a beat. "But they'd all been through the same experiment as you had...more so, I think."

"More so?" Alice queried, not liking where her mind was going with that.

"You said they were little children," Dr Ferricks replied.

"If..." She swallowed. "If it's the kids I'm thinking of...two boys and a girl," at that Ferricks nodded, "one of the boys would be dark haired, the other boy and the girl would be brown haired." Again Ferricks nodded. "They were all ten and under...Lexia was only just seven."

Dr Ferricks winced. "Not any more," he said.

"H...how old?" Alice whispered.

"I'm guessing," he stressed, "but I suspect they're all ten years older."

Alice stared at Dr Ferricks. "Ten years?" she whispered. She felt physically sick. It was bad enough that she'd been robbed of what remained of her childhood but...this was infinitely worse. She found herself bursting into tears. "They were just **kids**!"

Dr Ferricks said nothing, instead he handed her a tissue.

For a few minutes, Alice's sobs continued, unchecked. This situation was just wrong. How could anyone do this to anyone, let alone a bunch of basically sweet-natured kids like Rick, Lexia and John? But as she wondered about that, a new memory fragment surfaced. Of parents. Rick and Lexia's; John and hers. How could they let this happen?

"How could who let this happen?" Dr Ferricks asked.

Alice flushed, not having intended to say the question aloud. "My parents. They're...protective of us...I think." She added that last because she realised that she couldn't clearly remember anyone's parents. They were just shadowy, half-formed figures in her mind.

"You don't sound sure about that," said Dr Ferricks. "Are you all right?"

Alice slowly shook her head, trying to clear her mind. "I don't know...can't seem to remember anything much. Just...fragments."

Dr Ferricks grimaced. "I'm sorry -- I should have realised sooner. Time Force must have put you through a memory adaptation, too. I have something that will help you remember -- if you want to try it?"

Alice gave a shrug. "Guess it can't make things worse." From the bench behind him, Dr Ferricks took a hypo-spray. "What is it?"

"It's a drug called Mimozin," Dr Ferricks answered. "It reverses memory adaptations."

Alice frowned. "You seem to know a lot about this."

He offered her a shrug. "I've been battling Time Force and their evil works for most of my life. Out of necessity I've had to study their methods so that I can help their victims."

Which, Alice decided, was a valid reason. "OK."

She felt a sting as he pressed the hypo-spray against her neck. The contents emptied into her bloodstream and started to work almost at once. For a few moments, she felt dizzy and then the mist started to lift, like a shroud, from her memories.

"How's that?" Dr Ferricks asked.

"Better." 

"Do you remember your parents now?" he asked solicitously.

Alice frowned again. Her mother remained a misty, faint apparition, but her father...stepfather, she realised, was real, as were both of Rick and Lexia's parents. And that reality showed her something that made her stomach clench in anger and nausea. "Oh my God..."

Dr Ferricks regarded her in confusion. "What?"

Alice slowly shook her head, her sadness burning into a cold anger. "You said it was Time Force that did this to me?"

"Yes it was."

Alice felt sick. "Our own parents..."

Dr Ferricks gasped. "What are you saying?"

Alice looked up at his kindly face, misery and anger setting her expression hard. "Time Force is my parents and their friends. They did this to me...us."

~*~

Lexia hugged her legs to her chest and shivered. This couldn't be happening. This had to be some sort of weird nightmare.

She just **couldn't** be suddenly grown up.

And that, she realised, wasn't the strangest thing about this. Even as she sat, naked, in this little cell-like room, she realised there was all sorts of new information in her mind. It wasn't just her body that had been aged. Whoever...whatever had done this had inserted all manner of knowledge into her mind. Some of it was academic stuff -- the sort of things that she could imagine she'd have learned in school. Some of it was...different.

Lexia hiccupped with near-hysterical laughter as she realised that amongst the information that had been dumped into her mind was a recipe for making explosives out of nothing more exotic than toothpaste and a few household cleaners. Nor was that the only piece of information like that she now possessed.

__

Well it'll sure make for an interesting first date!

~*~

John set his jaw, anger coiling in the pit of his stomach.

Whoever had done this was going to pay.

And as he thought about that he realised that he suddenly seemed to know hundreds of different moves to kill and maim just with his bare hands. Knowledge of several different martial arts styles was instantly available to him as though he'd studied them his whole life. Information about other fighting styles too. Open hand, swordplay, quarterstaff. Details of how various weapons worked and how to use them.

__

They've turned me into some sort of super soldier!

~*~

Rick shivered.

It was still a shock to him to realise he was suddenly adult sized and, more, that he suddenly had all sorts of information bubbling at the back of his mind. Information about computers and communications. He'd been interested in computers, at least from a game-play standpoint. Now he knew how to practically hack into the NASA computer system.

It was frightening...and strangely cool.

The more he thought about it, the more he decided he liked the new information.

Maybe this wouldn't be quite so bad.

~*~

Alice knew what she was going to do. What **they** were going to do.

"You say you've been fighting Time Force," she said.

Dr Ferricks nodded. "I have but...I'm just one man. There is..." He sighed. "There is little I can truly accomplish."

Alice met his gaze. "You've got help now," she promised. "After what they've done to me...to my brother and his friends... We're gonna get them."

~*~

The sound of a door opening startled Lexia out of her introspection.

Looking up, she found herself staring at a familiar looking blonde woman.

"A...Alice?" she queried.

The woman smiled a little. "Sure am, Lexia."

She flung herself at the older woman in a tight bear hug. "Oh my God...I thought it was just me!" Lexia felt Alice's arms go around her shoulders. 

"They got all four of us," Alice said softly.

"John -- and Rick too?"

Alice nodded. Gently pushing her away, she held out a robe. "Here. Best we can manage for clothes right now. Guess the bastards didn't think about what would happen..."

"Do you know what's going on?" Lexia asked, gladly wrapping herself up in the robe.

"Yeah." Alice sighed. "I know what's goin' on -- and I promise you this, Lex, we're gonna get them."

~*~

At the sound of a door opening, John sprang to his feet, instantly ready for any threat that might walk into this cell.

"Relax, Jonno, it's just me," said the blonde woman who had entered.

Without relaxing his stance, John stared at her. "Ali?"

She smiled a little. "Yeah -- it's me." She held out a robe to him.

Finally convinced it really was his sister, John gratefully accepted the robe and pulled it on. "No clothes?" he asked.

Alice shook her head. "We're working on that."

"Who's this 'we'?"

"Dr Ferricks...he's the guy that rescued us."

"Us? Us as in you and me?" But John somehow knew that wasn't going to be the case, and nor was he disappointed as Alice shook her head.

"No -- us as in Rick, Lexia, you and me."

"And you know what's going on?"

Alice nodded. "I'm gonna explain. Promise. Just lemme go get Rick 'kay?"

John nodded. "We're gonna get the bastards who did this to us?" he asked as she turned to leave.

"Oh, count on it," Alice replied.

~*~

Rick looked up as he heard the door open in time to see a gorgeous, leggy, blonde woman walk in.

To his complete embarrassment, he found himself reacting to her presence.

"Rick?" she queried. "You OK?"

"Um..."

"OK, so I should be grateful that I didn't get this off my brother. That would have just been too gross." She rolled her eyes, although she did also look slightly amused. Rick wasn't entirely sure how to take that. 

"Alice?!" he finally managed.

"Last time I checked," she responded. She held out a robe. "C'mon. The others are waiting."

Rick swallowed and hastily wrapped himself in the proffered robe, wondering wildly if he could make any more of an idiot of himself. "Others?" he echoed faintly.

"John and Lexia. They got all four of us." She held out a hand and pulled him to his feet. "But we're gonna get them. Promise."

~*~

Half an hour later, Dr Ferricks had managed to conjure clothing to fit Rick, Lexia and John. For Rick, it was a red shirt and black jeans. Lexia got a pink tube-top and pale grey hipsters. John received a black shirt and blue jeans. Alice had to smile to herself. The significance of the colours wasn't lost on her, even if the triumvirate weren't aware of it.

"Ali?" John asked. "You wanna tell us what's goin' on now?"

She smiled at her brother. "Of course -- first, this is the guy that's saved our butts." She waved her hand in Dr Ferricks' direction. "Dr Ferricks."

"You may call me Frax for short," he announced. "It's what all my friends call me."

"As for what's goin' on," Alice continued. "It's like this..."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	5. Confrontation

Confrontation

Ian 'Fos' Foster was a happy-go-lucky sort of guy. A former Marine -- and one time subordinate of one Master Sergeant Myers -- he'd joined the Silver Guardians when his tour of duty was up. His switch of career was due, in no small part, to disillusionment with the forces and a desire to do some real good in his own country.

And it wasn't a bad job, being a Guardian. It wasn't a safe job -- he'd probably faced as much live ammunition fire in ten years of being a Guardian as he'd faced in his entire time in the Marine Corps -- but it was certainly far from monotonous. So when he and his squad had been ordered to Cranston Plaza to neutralise a 'threat', he hadn't known what to expect.

As he reached the relative safety of an ornamental fountain under a heavy hail of blaster fire, he found himself reflecting that whatever he had been expecting, this would not have been it.

Ambushed.

He grimaced. Ambushed by four rangers and a bunch of bronze robots. This was definitely **not** going to be good.

He pressed the transmit button on his headset and received a squawk of static for his pains. _Goddamn!_ he cursed silently. _Why'd I have to be the sap who gets bad guys with brains?_ The static told him that he and the rest of the squad were most effectively being jammed. It meant there wasn't likely to be any relief coming their way any time soon.

__

'Kay Fos -- you're paid to be a commander; command. Get your team through this.

He took stock of the situation. He and Deslaurier -- the squad second in command -- were both crouched behind the fountain. Not too far away were three other members of the squad, using a couple of giant, ornamental flowerpots as cover, but all five of them were completely pinned down. There was no way to return fire.

And there were two members of the squad missing.

"Any sign of Clingeleffer or Jones?" Foster asked, looking at Deslaurier who shook her head. "Damn." He had a shrewd idea what that meant but it would need confirmation.

With due caution, Foster peered around the side of the fountain. Sure enough, the two missing members of the squad were sprawled out on the plaza concrete. He grimaced. Judging by the lack of damage to the flowerpots -- the more flimsy of the two areas of cover -- they were just stunned, but...

"What now, boss?" asked Deslaurier.

Foster sighed. _Damn good question._ "What we need is to find a way out of this." He made another cautious examination of the plaza, taking note of the location of the rest of the stone planters. "If I can distract the hostiles, you and the rest of the squad still standing can get round to the SUV and evac out of here."

"And you're going to do...?"

Foster smiled. "Give me your blaster." Deslaurier looked bemused but did as she was asked and handed over her weapon. He took out his own blaster and holstered the borrowed weapon. "The neat thing," Foster continued, prying open the casing on his own blaster, "is that if you reverse the charge chip," he extracted the chip, "these things overload." He poised the chip to reinsert it into the weapon. "Ready?"

Deslaurier hesitated. "What're you going to do once you've done that?"

"Keep 'em busy," Foster replied succinctly. "Once you're out of this immediate area, call up command. We need reinforcements."

"You're going to take them on single handed?" Deslaurier shook her head. "This plan sucks."

"And your better idea would be...?" Deslaurier sighed and grimaced. "Thought not." Foster sighed. "Ready?" Deslaurier nodded. He inserted the chip. Almost immediately the blaster started to emit a soft, high-pitched whine. "Now!"

One the command, Foster turned, bounced to his feet, aimed and threw the improvised grenade in the direction of the robots and rangers. He barely waited to see where it landed before dropping back behind the fountain. His movement effectively covered Deslaurier's move from fountain to plant pot.

No sooner had he hit the ground again than the blaster exploded. He didn't need to look to know that Deslaurier would lead the other three swiftly round to the SUV under cover of the explosion. He waited a beat, drawing the borrowed blaster, then bounced to his feet again, snapping off a couple shots at the quartet of rangers, noting that the blast had successfully disabled the robots, before diving for fresh cover, careful to go in the opposite direction to the one the squad were taking.

The ploy worked. All fire concentrated on him, leaving the rest of the squad to move freely. Not long after his move, he heard the SUV start up and leave. Stage one complete. Foster allowed himself a brief smile at that. Then the planter he was using as cover exploded into concrete shards, and he was brought back to the situation he was still in.

Reacting automatically, even as the concrete shattered, Foster rolled to his right, back towards the fountain, snapping off another couple of shots. But even as he reached the relative safety of the fountain that too exploded into stone chips. He kept moving, rolling to his feet, snapping off more shots at the...shit! Three rangers! Where'd the fourth one...the Black one go?

"Going somewhere, soldierboy?"

The Black Ranger's blaster was aimed straight at Foster's forehead.

"Let me give you a tip," purred the White Ranger as she and the others joined her Black cohort. "Drop your weapon."

The blaster dropped from Foster's grip, clattering to the plaza concrete.

"Good little soldierboy," the White Ranger cooed, drawing a gloved hand down Foster's cheek. Her voice was a sultry, husky tone that just seemed to wrap itself around the purely male parts of Foster's anatomy. He swallowed. Hard. "Now..." Foster suddenly found himself doubling over in pain as she kneed him in the groin. At once the seduction was over and her voice became hard. "We have a little message for your Time Force masters."

Red and Pink Rangers roughly grabbed Foster's arms and forced him to stand up straight. The White Ranger gripped his chin and forced him to look straight into the faceplate of her helmet.

"We," she continued, "are the Vengeance Rangers and we are coming for them."

She released her grip and stepped back, nodding to the Black Ranger, who had holstered his blaster. Before Foster could wonder at that, the Black Ranger stepped forward and buried his fist straight into Foster's stomach.

"Say good night, soldierboy."

Foster wasn't sure who said it, but it seemed to be a cue as Pink and Red released their hold on his arms while sweeping his legs out from under him. Suddenly robbed of balance, he fell forwards and hit the concrete, hard. He started to struggle to his feet, then a white-booted foot swung into his field of vision. He had a moment to register that sight, then the toe connected with his head, right between his eyes and everything faded to a starry black.

~*~

Eric hated waiting. He was better at it now than he'd been when he'd first returned to Silverhills, some twelve years earlier. A combination of commanding the Silver Guardians, then later marrying Kimberly and gaining a family had taught him patience, but that patience didn't extend to actually enjoying the wait.

And given that he was currently waiting for information that might help him find said family before anything happened to them -- anything more, he amended -- the waiting was particularly grating.

He suspected that Kimberly would have taken it hard had it just been John who was kidnapped, but Alice too... They -- Kimberly and Alice -- had gone through so much prior to meeting him that their relationship was far closer than just mother and daughter. It had got them both through some terrible times; it was the reason for a lot of the stormy arguments of the last few years. It meant that right now, Kimberly was barely hanging on.

And in a moment of honesty, he knew he was little better. He saw so much of himself in John. Saw so many chances not so much to right what went so wrong in his own life as make sure that they never went wrong in his son's life. It meant that he and John were almost as close as Alice and Kimberly.

The only way Eric could deal with this was by throwing himself into the hunt for the children.

Unfortunately, to do that, he needed information.

Information that Zaskin was still researching.

Eric **hated** waiting.

~*~

Danielle 'Barbie' Hines loathed clearing warehouses on the principle that it was usually the fastest route to getting ambushed. Given what she'd heard over the Guardian radio net, about the ambush at Cranston Plaza, she was even less inclined to enjoy the task.

It would have to be Fos' team that got that call.

She glanced around at her surroundings. Packing cases, stacked four or five high, arranged in neat, angular rows. Lighting so dim that she could barely make out the tops of the stacks. Yep, perfect place for an ambush.

Fos would have to be the Guardian who got beaten up.

Barbie grimaced. She was worried about Fos. They had dated, briefly, not long after they'd both left the Marines and joined the Silver Guardians. They'd quickly realised that wasn't going to work, but for all that, theirs was a close friendship and to not know how badly hurt he was...

...was going to get her killed if she didn't start paying attention to her surroundings. With another grimace, she swept her gaze over the piles of packing cases...

...and caught a movement. There -- top of the stack to her right and just ahead.

Barbie halted and slowly, carefully, studied the row of cases, trying to spot what it was that had caught her attention. Out of the gloom came a shape, man-sized, dropping straight for her.

Before she could so much as open her mouth, he was on her, tackling her to the ground. There was a loud crack as her head connected with the concrete of the warehouse floor and she saw stars.

Dazed, she felt a gloved hand trace her jaw line, even as a male body pressed her against the cold concrete.

"Well aren't you the pretty one," he murmured.

Barbie tried to regain her scattered wits but when she tried to focus on his face all she could see was a red-and-black blur. It seemed to take forever for the realisation that this was one of the rangers who'd ambushed Fos to penetrate her mind.

"I'd almost be tempted to keep you," he murmured, his voice taking on a lascivious tone and she felt him press closer to her, firmly trapping her against the concrete. "But I need you to do a job."

"Get...your...paws...offa me!" Barbie tried to squirm out of his grip but he was too close, his weight too much for her to shift.

He laughed, a hand stroking down the side of her face again. "Such a pity. I could have **fun** with you but..." His hand reached her chin and took hold of it in a bruising grip. "The Vengeance Rangers are coming for Time Force."

Barbie knew what was going to happen next -- possibly even before the ranger knew it. She felt his hand tighten even more. He pulled up then pushed back, driving her head against the concrete. Starbursts of colour invaded her vision and she knew she was blacking out.

"Rick, that was overkill," muttered a soft, female voice.

"Oh, and you coming on to Fossie wasn't?" retorted a male voice moving away from her even as it spoke.

Then the world faded out and Barbie knew no more.

~*~

Wes folded his arms and leaned against the wall, his expression grim. He reflected that they should have guessed trouble was not going to be limited to just -- and at that word, he snorted -- the abduction of the four children.

"Guardian Foster's just being checked over by the doctor now."

With difficulty, Wes pulled his attention to the nurse who was hovering at his side. "Pardon?"

The nurse offered a tight smile, perhaps in recognition of Wes' obviously black mood. "Guardian Foster is currently with the doctor -- he came round about fifteen minutes ago." It still took Wes a moment or two to fully realise what the nurse meant. "If you'd like to come this way."

Wes nodded and followed the nurse. Hospital 'duty' was always, and virtually without exception, his, which he didn't mind so much. Normally. It was an excuse to be out of the office. Normally.

Right at this moment, though, the last place he wanted to be was out of the office because being out of the office meant he wouldn't hear about any breakthroughs Zaskin might have made quite as quickly as if he was actually in the building. Then again, given what Deslaurier had reported...

"You may see him now," said the nurse, and she ushered him into Foster's room.

Wes nodded thanks.

Foster was sitting up on the bed, dressed in a hospital gown and looking decidedly worse for wear.

"One day I'll learn to duck, huh?" Foster joked weakly.

Wes dredged a wry chuckle. "Des said it was other rangers."

Slowly, Foster nodded, the faint smile fading from his face. "Yeah -- and someone seems to have forgotten to tell them the SGs are the good guys."

"What happened?" Wes asked.

"They called themselves the Vengeance Rangers," Foster replied.

Wes listened as the man on the bed reported what had happened an hour or so earlier and felt his mood darken even further. 

Yep. It really did never rain but pour...

~*~

Taylor silently cursed as she made her way towards the muster point. 

Someone had sent a bomb threat to Biolab, threatening the new Silver Guardians training facility in the East Hills area of the city.

The Guardians and the cops had been called in to evacuate and cordon off the facility while bomb disposal experts went over the place with a fine toothcomb.

"Is that everyone?" she asked as she reached the knot of commanders.

Ben, who was in overall charge of the Guardians on the ground, nodded. "So far as we can tell, yeah, that's everyone."

Miller slowly shook his head. "What's the betting this is all a hoax?"

Taylor snorted. "If it is, I sure..."

But she never got to complete that sentence as a huge explosion ripped through the glass-and-steel building.

Taylor found herself being flung to the ground by the blast's shockwave, even as a hail of red-hot shards of steel started to rain down around them. She was faintly aware of someone screaming but the ringing in her ears muffled the sound. It was only when the pain in her shoulder started to override the shock that she realised she was the one screaming.

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	6. Confirmation

__

Special thanks to Justin, Gamine and Gillian for the help with the final scene in this episode. Couldn't have done it without you guys.

Confirmation

Kimberly waited for Jen in the reception area of the clinic. 

It should have been Wes here, but just as they'd been preparing to leave the SGHQ an urgent call had come in that Wes had been forced to take. Kimberly had readily agreed to act as moral support instead.

At that point in her thoughts, Kimberly spotted Jen returning, a strange, shell-shocked mix of fear, horror and delight on her face. _Not more bad news..._ She was on her feet and across to Jen in an instant.

"I'm pregnant," Jen stated woodenly. "My two children have been abducted...they need me to be a ranger...and I'm pregnant."

~*~

Miller gave a jaundiced look over the wreckage of the East Hills training facility. He'd been a Silver Guardian since the force's inception -- longer, in fact, than Commander Myers -- and this was probably the most senseless act of violence he'd seen in that time. The amazing thing was, he reflected, that Commander Earhardt was the only serious casualty, and while three inches of steel in the shoulder was not fun, it wasn't life threatening.

__

Better call this in to SGHQ and let them know Commander Earhardt's _out of action._ He sighed and turned away from the smoking ruins only to find himself facing two rangers, one Pink, one Black.

Before he could say or do anything, Black grabbed him and pinned his arms behind his back.

"That," said Pink, "was a warning."

"You did this?" Miller retorted. "You going to kill me now?"

Pink snorted. "I said: this is a warning -- and I'm sorry your colleague got hurt." There did seem to be genuine regret in her voice. 

"What we want," continued Black, his voice very close to Miller's ear, "is for you to give a message to your Time Force masters."

"My what?"

Pink plucked at his uniform. "Your bosses," she said. "Tell them to be at the old grain warehouse at six o'clock this evening or this is just the start of a long line of destruction."

Black squeezed his arms tighter then suddenly the pressure on his shoulders was gone as both Rangers vanished in a haze of teleportation sparkles.

~*~

Jen said nothing on the journey back to the SGHQ. Kimberly guessed she was still trying to come to terms with things. 

__

Why does everything happen at once? Kimberly wondered as she piloted the borrowed SUV into the parking lot of the SGHQ.

"I can't be the Pink Ranger," said Jen suddenly.

Kimberly pulled into a space and parked, not knowing how to respond to that.

"But," Jen continued, "we need the Pink Ranger. If there's Cyclobots involved...can't afford not to have a Pink Ranger." Kimberly opened her mouth to say something. "C'mon, I've got an idea."

Kimberly turned to look at Jen. For the first time since they'd left the clinic, there was a positive, decisive light to Jen's expression. "An idea?" Kimberly echoed.

"Need to go and see Michael Zaskin," Jen replied, undoing her seatbelt. "C'mon."

~*~

Eric was about to stand up, intending to head down to Zaskin's lab to see if there was any news, when his phone started to ring.

__

Please be news...

"Myers," he answered.

"Commander um..." Gina sounded nervous. Eric felt his heart sink. More bad news, then. "Paul...Commander Miller's just called in. There's been an explosion at the East Hills centre."

Eric froze. "What?"

"There was a bomb threat," Gina clarified.

"What? When?"

"This morning -- Commander Johnson was dealing with it."

Which, of course, Ben was likely to do -- the days of Eric taking every single decision in the Silver Guardians about who did what had long since gone and he wasn't generally sorry about that. "I see." Then a thought struck him. "Hang on -- if Ben was in charge..." A new, sinking feeling invaded the pit of his stomach.

"Commander Johnson is OK," Gina answered, "but he's at the hospital."

"What happened?"

"Commander Earhardt was injured." Eric closed his eyes. "It's not serious but..."

"How?" Eric asked.

"Falling debris," Gina answered. "Paul said he's on his way here. Said there was something you'd want to know."

~*~

After exchanging a few more pleasantries with Foster -- including what the doctor had told Foster about his injuries -- Wes was about to leave the other man's hospital room and head back to the SGHQ when the nurse who'd shown him up to the room reappeared, bearing a clipboard.

"I guess you'll be wanting to see the others now," she said.

Wes blinked.

"Others?" Foster queried. "I didn't think Clingeleffer or Jones would be here."

Wes shook his head. "They're not -- they went to SGHQ. Others?" he added, looking at the nurse.

"A couple more Guardians have been brought in," the nurse replied, consulting with her clipboard. "Danielle Hines," Foster swore softly, "and Taylor Earhardt."

Wes felt his skin chill. "Why?"

"What happened to them?" Foster wanted to know.

"Ms Hines has major concussion; Ms Earhardt has a rather nasty shoulder wound." At that moment, Ben appeared, his expression looking thunderous. The nurse took one look at him, sighed and left.

"Ben?" said Wes. "How's Taylor?"

A brief smile flickered across Ben's face. "She's going to be OK. She's pissed but...three inches of steel through your shoulder won't improve your temper." Wes winced. "Just got word from the boss," Ben continued. "We've got a meeting back at SGHQ."

~*~

Jen folded her arms across her chest and watched as Zaskin consulted the scanner read-outs.

"Well," Zaskin began, "all the signs are good. All the readings are optimal... I'd say it's been successful." He looked round. "But the ultimate test..."

Jen nodded. "Kim -- catch." She tossed the small, egg-shaped device in Kimberly's direction. Kimberly caught it. "If you hold it against your left wrist the scanner will tell you if it's worked."

Kimberly nodded and did so. Jen held her breath. From the set of Zaskin's shoulders he too was waiting.

"DNA confirmed."

Jen sighed in relief. Zaskin's shoulders relaxed.

"Looks like we're family," said Kimberly, grinning broadly.

Jen nodded and opened her mouth to reply only to be stalled by a bleep from her Guardian headset. "Of course," she murmured, unclipping it and pulling it on, "there's still one hurdle." Into the headset she said, "Go ahead Control."

"Commander Myers has called an urgent meeting for all SG commanders," Control stated. "Is Mrs Myers with you?"

"Yes."

"She's also invited."

Jen felt a nervous thrill. That could only mean one thing: News. "Where and when?"

"Conference room one, SGHQ, twenty minutes."

"Understood. Commander Collins out."

"Problems?" asked Kimberly.

"News," Jen answered. "Eric's called a meeting."

~*~

To say the frustration was getting to Eric was an understatement as he waited in the conference room for everyone to arrive. He had a gut feeling that these new Rangers were somehow, someway connected to the kidnapping of Alice, John, Rick and Lexia. It was too much like coincidence, something he'd long since stopped believing in.

"Boss?" Miller's voice drew Eric out of his reverie. "What're you going to do?"

"What about?"

"The ultimatum."

Eric offered Miller a wry smile. "Honestly, Paul? I don't know."

The conference door opened to admit Wes, Ben and, to Eric's surprise, Foster.

"He insisted," said Wes before Eric could comment, in a tone of voice that implied he didn't think much of Foster's decision.

"Bruised ribs and mild concussion," Foster retorted. "I've had worse. Besides," he added, taking a seat at the conference table, "we're short one commander and it's not like I don't have a contribution to make in this meeting."

Before Eric could answer, the door of the conference room opened again, this time to admit Kimberly and Jen. He pinched the bridge of his nose and just groaned. 

Kimberly lifted an eyebrow as she sat down. "OK?"

"Yeah." Eric pinched the bridge of his nose again and swallowed back the frustration and irritation.

"Message I got," said Jen, "was that there was news. What's up?"

Grateful for the opportunity to get the meeting underway, Eric nodded. "What isn't?" he replied. He briefly outlined what had occurred at the East Hills facility, including the ultimatum.

"Sure seem to be preoccupied by Time Force," Foster observed. "Which is weird for an organisation that doesn't exist yet."

"Well, technically," Wes replied, "Jen, Eric and I are employed by Time Force. Guess that means it does exist. Kinda."

"Very 'kinda'," murmured Eric.

Foster looked thoughtful for a moment. "What she actually said to me was 'your Time Force masters'."

"They're after us," Eric judged.

"You're not paranoid but the man following you is," Kimberly murmured.

"And just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me." Eric looked across at Wes and Jen. "What do you think?"

Wes looked grim. "You're right. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"You think this could be what Lucas mentioned?" Ben asked.

"It could be," said Jen. "I know that morphers were considered to be weapons."

"So what now?" Miller asked.

"Is there anything else about these guys?" Eric asked. "Any signs of any weapons?"

"They have blasters," Foster stated, a rueful smile on his face. "Clingeleffer, Jones and I can testify to that. Apart from that -- and apart from the robots -- no other weapons."

Eric stared at Foster. "Robots?"

"Cyclobots. They were a number of 'em at Cranston Plaza."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Jen, paling.

Foster nodded.

"If they had Cyclobots with them..." Kimberly began.

"They probably know where the children are," Eric finished.

"They want Time Force," said Ben. "Why not give 'em Time Force?"

~*~

Kimberly listened as plans were laid for the meeting that evening. When Eric mentioned Jen's presence in the plan, she opened her mouth to speak, only to catch Jen shaking her head. Not the time. Kimberly nodded and subsided.

"I'm in on this," Foster insisted as Eric drew the meeting to a close. "I owe 'em at least one."

Kimberly watched as Eric groaned. "All right -- I'm not going to argue with you Fos."

Foster looked triumphant as he left the room with Ben and Miller.

"He's nuts," Eric muttered.

"Takes one to know one," Wes shot back.

Kimberly smiled faintly at the look Eric favoured Wes with.

"There's ah...a slight hitch with this plan," said Jen.

Kimberly could see concern and irritation warring in Eric's expression. The concern won out.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Wes' expression, Kimberly noted, was the same shell-shocked mix of horror, fear and delight that Jen's had been when she'd initially left the consulting room at the clinic.

"I'm three weeks pregnant," Jen answered.

Eric looked stunned. "Oh," was all he actually said. Kimberly could all too easily guess what else it was he wanted to say and knew none of it was either polite or aimed at Jen, just at matters in general.

"I know." Jen sighed. "Everything happens at once."

"Understatement of the year," Eric retorted sharply, then looked contrite. "Sorry."

Wes offered a faint smile as he wrapped his arm around Jen's shoulders. "We'll find a way around this."

Jen smiled a little. "Actually," she said, "I...we already have."

"We...?" Eric looked from Jen to Kimberly and back. "Oooh no."

Wes looked stunned. "That's not possible."

"It is possible," Eric cut in. "And dangerous and not tried and just **no**!"

"Huh?" said Wes.

"One of Zaskin's current projects," Jen explained, "is DNA masking."

"I know that," Wes retorted.

"You are **not** doing it," Eric stated.

Kimberly smiled at her husband. "Aren't I?"

"It's dangerous..."

"If you tell me that being a Ranger is dangerous so help me I'll..."

"It's already done," Jen cut in.

Eric paled. "Done?"

"Done," Kimberly confirmed. She softened her expression. "Eric -- I've done this before. You know I have." Eric's expression cracked, revealing the source of his anger: A deep-seated fear. That was something Kimberly could sympathise with. She reached out and touched him on the arm. "Remember: Not made of glass."

Eric sighed, looking down, presumably at her hand. "I know." He sighed. "I'd be an idiot not to go for this idea." He looked up, fear now almost successfully masked. "OK. On one condition."

"Which is?" said Jen.

"You want to put me through my paces this afternoon?" Kimberly suggested.

Eric nodded. "Damn straight. I want to be sure this is really going to work."

~*~

Eric was almost relieved, at six o'clock, to lead the handpicked contingent of Guardians into the warehouse. Between checking, double checking and triple checking that the grain depot wasn't one huge trap designed to blow them all to hell and checking, double checking and triple checking that the DNA masking really was going to work and the Pink Chrono-morpher wasn't suddenly going to fail mid-fight, the afternoon had probably been one of the most stressful of his career.

The contingent was twelve strong, including himself. Wes, Ben and Miller had been automatic choices, having had plenty of experience fighting Cyclobots. Kimberly was naturally included as was Foster -- despite medical advice and Eric's own better judgement. The other six members of the party were all experienced Guardians although of the six, only Schwartz had been an active Guardian during Ransik's attacks on the city. He hoped that wasn't going to be a problem. 

In a shimmer of teleportation sparkles, the so-called Vengeance Rangers arrived in the warehouse accompanied by some four score of Cyclobots.

"Ho-lee shit," breathed Foster.

Eric felt inclined to agree as he made a visual assessment of the four rangers. One amongst them was a good strategist, he could say that much for certain. They'd picked the battleground and automatically put the meeting on their terms by showing up with so many Cyclobots. 

From the way they were standing, Eric judged the two men of the team -- Red and Black -- to be fighters although Black's stance was that little bit more firm and certain. White, who was to the fore of the group in the position Eric had himself adopted -- that of leader -- also looked to be a fighter, although her whole attitude reminded him of teenager in a snit. Pink, who was standing just behind White and between Red and Black, looked flat out nervous.

Further assessment was stalled as White took a step forward.

"You showed up," she drawled. "I'm impressed."

"Momma brought me up to be punctual," Ben answered.

White cocked her head. "Getting the help to speak for you, old man?" she jibed.

Eric matched her gesture and stepped forward, not rising to the bait. "You've gone to a lot of trouble to get us here," he stated calmly. "What do you want?"

White folded her arms across her chest. "It's quite straightforward. We want you." 

"Why?"

White laughed, a hard, brittle sound. "Because we're going to finish what you started, old man."

That seemed to be the cue for all hell to break loose. The Cyclobots surged forwards; ending what few hopes Eric might have entertained of this being discussed peacefully.

As the first wave of 'bots reached him, Eric noted that the four Rangers stayed out of the fray, observing events. He buried his fist into the midriff of the nearest robot. _Definitely a good tactician in that group_, he decided, even as the Cyclobot fought back. _Stand back..._ He winced as the bot landed a kick to his knee, all but taking out his leg. _Watch how we fight..._ He dropped into a crouch and swept the legs out from under several nearby Cyclobots. _Then pick us off when we're tired._ He rolled back to his feet, ready to launch himself at the next foe. _Well two can play at that game._

Over the comm. he said, "Guardians -- you have the metal heads..."

"Say what you like," cut in Foster, "but the Black one's mine."

"I've got Red," added Wes.

"Pink's mine," said Kimberly.

Eric opened his mouth to countermand that but Ben got in first: "Kick that leader bitch's ass, boss," he instructed. "For Barbie and Taylor."

Beneath his helmet, Eric smiled thinly. "You got it." So saying, he vaulted over the mass of Cyclobots, aware of Wes, Kimberly and Foster following his lead in their own fashions, and landed right in front of the White Ranger. Aloud he said, "You know it's kinda rude to start a party and then not dance yourself."

"You think you can keep up with me, old man?" the White Ranger shot back. "Well lemme see what you got."

So saying, she launched a high, snap kick that was intended to take his head off. Eric swayed out of the way, deflecting the blow as he went. She spun with his deflection, coming round into a series of punches. He rolled with the blows, waiting for an opening.

Sure enough, one came as White lunged forward. Eric twisted, letting her blow slide by. As she stumbled, taken beyond her point of balance by the lack of an impact, he hooked her leg out from under her and she fell.

"Is that the best you've got, old man?" she sneered as she rolled back to her feet. "Cheap shots and dodges?"

"Oh, there's plenty more." Eric dropped into a ready stance and made a 'c'mon' motion with his hands.

She didn't disappoint.

She rushed him. Beneath his helmet, Eric smiled ferally. As she neared him, he grabbed her and executed a hip toss but rather than letting go, he pivoted round, retaining his hold on her arm, twisting it up and behind her back.

She reacted automatically, trying to drive her free elbow back into his gut. He evaded that, and the inevitable foot stamp but there was no avoiding her third attempt at getting free. Her right foot came up and planted itself in his groin.

Eric reeled away, doubled over. He knew the pain would be worse if he was unmorphed but... 

She kicked out at him, catching him first on the shoulder and then the chest, then the head for good measure, the last blow enough to snap his head back and make him see stars.

"And here I thought you were a warrior," White hissed.

Eric blinked. He could taste blood on his tongue and he realised he had bitten either tongue or lip.

"But you're nothing. You're just a sad, pathetic old man and you're goin' down."

"I don't think so," Eric retorted.

Before she could add another jibe, it was Eric's turn to rush her, but as he neared her and she started to reach to return the hip toss he sprang, somersaulting over her. He landed behind her. As she turned, he was up into the air to deliver a snap kick of his own, connecting with the 'jaw' of her helmet.

Her head jerked back at the blow. Eric followed up, not giving her a chance to recover, kicking out with his trailing leg as he came down, catching her this time on the breastbone. She reeled backwards.

Eric followed her, not letting up. He punched, again catching her in the chest. She took another step backwards. He followed, driving her back with a flurry of kicks and punches that were less and less defended.

He dropped into a leg sweep, clicking her ankles together and dropping her. She hit the ground, striking her head awkwardly.

The crack echoed through a suddenly silent warehouse, bringing Eric up short. He froze. The last thing he wanted to do was kill her.

Unsteadily, she clambered back to her feet, shaking her head. "Is that...the best you got...old man?"

The sway to her stance to told Eric she was all but unconscious where she stood. He slowly shook his head.

"Give it up kid," he said.

"Fight me you son of a bitch!"

"No."

"You've got to pay!" she screamed. "You did this to me!"

Eric barely had a chance to register the words before she was charging him in a blind fury. He reacted instinctively, using the momentum of her charge against her in another hip toss. As she went over, her helmet came free.

Eric realised the second the helmet came off what must have happened. When her head had struck the concrete one of the catches had born the brunt of the blow and the violence of the hip toss was more than one catch alone could stand. The white shell now spun away across the concrete.

There was a long, frozen moment. Eric's gaze switched from the helmet to the now helmet-less White Ranger. All he could see of her was a loose, blonde braid as she tried to push herself up off the concrete. He stepped closer.

"C'mon kid -- don't be stupid." Eric held out a hand, offering her help, but even as he did so he recognised the familiarity of the situation. The blonde hair, the way she moved, the way her breath sounded as it came in winded pants. He froze, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. It couldn't be...shouldn't be...

Oblivious to his torment, she managed to get to her knees and from there to her feet. He wanted to tell her to stop. So long as he didn't see her face this wasn't real, but she kept moving, unsteadily turning towards him. 

And then it was too late. She was facing him. This was real. This was happening. Bile hit the back of his throat. "Nonononono..." His knees gave out and he found himself collapsed on the concrete, looking up at her. Seeing her glare angrily back.

"I **don't** need your help," she hissed. "Daddy."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	7. Despair

Despair

Ben heard the crack as the White Ranger's head struck the concrete floor. He wasn't the only one, he realised, as everyone seemed to freeze. He turned to look in time to see the White Ranger unsteadily regain her feet.

"Is that...the best you got...old man?" she asked, the hitch in her voice telling Ben she was dazed.

From Eric's body language Ben guessed he'd spotted the signs too and was more than reluctant to continue this fight. "Give it up kid," Eric replied.

"Fight me you son of a bitch!"

"No." Ben watched as Eric's whole posture relaxed. It was a sure sign that as far as Eric was concerned, this fight was over.

"You've got to pay!" she screamed. "You did this to me!"

Ben's jaw hinged open, even as the White Ranger started to charge. He was reasonably sure that whatever had been done to the White Ranger, Eric was not the culprit. Nor was Eric prepared to play scapegoat, Ben realised. As the crazed female got within range, Eric grabbed her and hip tossed her...

...and as she went over, her helmet came off. She landed in an uncoordinated heap while the helmet spun away across the concrete. Ben found his eyes rooted to the spot where the ranger had landed. She was a blonde. For some reason, that surprised him.

Eric had stepped closer and was offering her a hand up, but there was something wrong. Something about the way Eric had tensed. Maybe it was just the familiarity of the hair colour -- after all, Alice was a blonde. Maybe this woman reminded Eric of his missing daughter.

But that thought evaporated when he heard the moan and saw Eric collapse to his knees. Ben felt sick as the White Ranger finally got back to her feet. He still hadn't seen her face clearly but her next words confirmed the unwilling conclusion he'd drawn,

"I don't need your help, **daddy**."

It was Alice. Ben didn't know how, didn't know why, but it was. Over his headset he could hear someone sobbing; a pitiful, broken sound that could only be coming from one source. The sickness was overridden by a deep and abiding anger at whoever had done this.

"Oh, so **now** you're remorseful?" Alice was scornfully taunting Eric now. Circling him. "You did this to me. To us."

"Alice!" The exclamation was frantic, almost bordering on hysterical, and suddenly Kimberly was moving across the warehouse.

Ben watched as Alice froze at her name. 

"Ohmygosh... Alice?"

Alice relaxed and returned her attention to the defeated Quantum Ranger. "Butt out Pinkie -- this doesn't concern you. Yet."

Ben watched as Kimberly's shoulders suddenly tensed. "Alice Megan Cunningham Myers that is enough!"

"Who...you're not her!" In a flash of light, Kimberly demorphed and stood in front of her daughter. "Who the hell are you?"

Ben couldn't see Kimberly's face but he was sure her expression was interesting at that question.

"You don't remember, do you?" Kimberly answered, a strange tone to her voice.

"And do you think I care?" Alice shot back.

"You should. How much else have you lost? How much else can't you remember?"

Alice's expression faltered, but before she could say anything she -- and the other Vengeance Rangers, and what few Cyclobots remained -- vanished in a haze of teleportation sparkles.

"Oh man," Ben murmured.

~*~

"Ali?"

Lexia's voice echoed through Frax's complex. Alice heard it easily but didn't bother responding. She needed time to think. That was why the second they'd returned to Frax's complex she'd demorphed and found herself an out-of-the-way place to think things through.

Who had that fierce woman been? It sure as hell wasn't Rick and Lexia's mom -- that was who Alice was sure normally used the Pink Time Force powers. And she'd known Alice. She shivered. Something subconscious recognised the way the woman had said her full name. The tone of voice.

And she had **known**. Known that Alice had gaps in her memories. If anything, that was what freaked Alice out the most.

Although seeing her stepfather on his knees and completely at her mercy without her having to do anything except reveal her identity was more than a little unnerving.

The whole set-up was a mess.

It was supposed to be easy. Fight. Get the three Time Force bastards. Make them pay. So simple...

"Thought I might find you here."

~*~

Briefly, Rocky wondered just why it was that he only ever seemed to end up in Silverhills when there was trouble in town. And one look at the pale, shadowed expression on Eric's face told Rocky that it was trouble with the capital T. _And what the hell can be worse than having your kids abducted?_ he wondered as he took his seat at the conference table in the SGHQ.

There was a long silence. Rocky glanced at the other occupants of the room. Everyone looked a little shell-shocked, although Wes and Jen slightly less so. As though whatever had happened had only affected them by proxy. _Or as though they don't actually have to believe it yet._ Rocky shuddered. It probably meant that they'd found one or more of the missing children, just not in time.

"OK, so does someone want to fill me in here?" he asked when no-one seemed over inclined to tell him what had happened.

"There's a new bunch of rangers in town," said Eric tonelessly. "Alice is one of them. There's four in total."

Rocky wished he hadn't asked.

"But it's not Alice as she was on Friday," Wes continued quietly. "She's older."

"And she's under some sort of mind control," said Kimberly. "I was there. She didn't know who the hell I was." Rocky winced at the hurt and pain in Kimberly's voice at that. "She seems to think that whatever happened to her between Saturday and today is..."

"My fault," Eric whispered.

"Ouch."

Rocky was about to ask how he could help when the holoscreen suddenly flared into life. Considering Rocky hadn't noticed its presence at the end of the conference room table, the sudden burst of noise from the device startled him more than somewhat.

Lucas obviously saw Rocky's reaction because he smiled a little sheepishly. "Sorry. I got your message -- what's happened?"

~*~

Rick watched as Alice jumped. She'd been so deep in thought that she obviously hadn't heard him walk up to her hiding place -- the dark, blank space under the stairs. It had been a place he'd spent a large amount of time in the previous day, trying to sort out his own feelings about the situation as Frax laid it out.

"Rick?"

"May I?" he asked, gesturing to the space beside her.

Alice shrugged. "Sure."

Rick sat down. "So...you want to talk about it?" he offered.

Alice sighed and tipped her head back until it was resting against the wall and she was studying the roughened concrete of the underside of the stairs. "What's to talk about?"

"Well, I don't know about you," he replied, "but what we got in that warehouse doesn't jive with anything Frax said about Eric Myers. That's weirding me out -- and all I was doing was watching you."

"If I'm honest," Alice admitted softly, "it doesn't really jive with what I remember of him either."

~*~

Lucas sat back in his seat as Wes finished the explanations. "Good news is," he said, "I can pretty much tell you what's happened to Alice."

"Which is?" asked Jen.

"AAMA," Lucas replied grimly.

Jen paled. "But that's illegal...I thought all the tech for that was destroyed."

"And for those of us who didn't go to the Time Force Academy that means...?" Rocky prompted before Lucas could respond to Jen's comments.

"Artificial Ageing Memory Adaptation. It was a process developed by one Merle Askot," Lucas replied.

Eric frowned. It was the first time Lucas had seen the other man so much as move since this meeting had begun. "Merle Askot?" he echoed. "As in...?"

Lucas nodded. "As in the ice cold bitch who created the Alpha Project."

"Another Time Force screw up job?" enquired Wes.

Lucas shook his head. "Actually no -- the reason I have any of this data to hand right now is there's a temporal hotspot circa 2920. Someone's made an illegal trip to that period and stolen the AAMA blueprints and test data."

~*~

"This doesn't add up," Rick continued quietly. "I know what Frax said...but..."

"You think he's lying," Alice stated.

"I don't think he's being totally straight with us," Rick agreed. "I mean, if Eric Myers was as cruel an SOB as Frax was making him out to be...why was he on his knees, crying when he realised it was you?"

"Guilt?" But Alice's voice carried little conviction. "I don't know." She sighed. "I...I remember all this stuff. About him...things he's supposed to have done...but it doesn't feel real."

"Real?"

"Well -- we've all gotten information just downloaded into our heads...what I remember about Eric's kinda like that...but kinda not...and that woman was right," Alice continued softly. "I know I've got gaps in my memory."

Rick looked at Alice. She looked confused, a far cry from the confidence he'd seen in her until now. "Do you have any ideas who that woman was?"

Alice shook her head. "Not a clue. She looked familiar but..." She trailed off and shrugged.

"Do you remember your mom?" Rick asked hesitantly.

~*~

"Someone?" queried Jen.

"Covert Ops received an encrypted transmission this morning," Lucas replied. "It stated that The Master had struck the first blow. Along with the transmission, which was back-timed in the system to three weeks ago, was encoded temporal data, giving precise details of when the temporal incursion was made and what was stolen."

"So it's this Master person who's done this to Alice?" said Wes.

"One of his subordinates, I think," Lucas answered.

"Lemme get my hands on the son of a bitch," Kimberly hissed. "I'll rip him limb from limb."

Lucas shivered. "Unfortunately, that's half the problem."

"What do you mean?" Eric asked in a tone of voice that made Lucas extremely relieved to be a thousand years into the future. It was a flinty-hard, venomous tone of voice that promised death to anyone who got in Eric's way over this.

"Potted history," Lucas replied. "About a year ago, TF Crime started to get reports that someone was steadily pulling back together the assorted criminal empires that, between us, we managed to wreck ten years ago. Ransik's cartel, Arachna's spy network...couple of smaller gangs. All reports stated it was being drawn together under the leadership of someone calling himself or herself The Master. And that's all we know about them. Whoever it is, they've hidden their tracks well."

~*~

Alice frowned for a few moments before finally shaking her head. "No. I know I have one...I know she's not dead...that's all I do know." She hesitated a beat. "Do you remember her?"

There was a long silence. Alice finally glanced in Rick's direction to find him frowning in concentration. He finally gave up and shook his head. "Nope, sorry."

Alice swallowed. "Do...you suppose that woman could have been her?"

Rick chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Well...not that I'm leaping to conclusions but...it would make sense."

"So why would someone block the memories of my mom?"

~*~

"Why would a crime lord of the thirty-first century want to do something to us, here?" Wes asked. "It doesn't make sense."

"Unfortunately, it does make sense," said Lucas with a sigh. "Wes, you and Jen and Eric probably did as much as anyone here to bring Ransik down, and then there's your roles in Arachna's downfall."

"Never mind that," said Kim, forcefully, "what do we do to get the children back?"

Lucas squirmed; again glad he was separated from Kimberly and Eric by a gulf of a thousand years. And with the way she was now glaring at him, even that might not be enough. "You'll need to give me twelve hours to speak to a couple of people in this time. I promise I'll have answers for you soon." Kimberly looked as if she might like to argue over that. "In fact...I'll contact you at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. If you can have Dr Zaskin present too."

"Why?" asked Jen, puzzled.

"Because I think that you're going to need some hardware along with whatever information I come up with," Lucas replied.

~*~

It somehow seemed natural for Rick to wrap his arm around Alice's shoulders. "Perhaps the question should be 'who', not why?" he suggested.

"But we know the answer to the 'who'," Alice replied quietly.

"We do?"

Alice sighed and opened her mouth to answer him, but before she could the sound of footsteps filled the space as someone ran down the stairs. A moment later and John appeared.

"There you two are," he started, but got no further. Rick realised, a little awkwardly, that John's eyes had fallen on where his arm was resting. John's eyebrows lifted. Rick stared back feeling both embarrassed and defiant. "Frax is looking for you," he eventually continued, not taking his eyes off Rick's arm, but there was no way Rick was moving it unless Alice asked him to -- it felt too right. "I think he wants to know what happened in the warehouse."

Alice sighed and, to Rick's surprise, she leaned her head against his shoulder. John's eyes widened at that although Alice seemed oblivious to her brother's reaction. "OK, Jonno. We'll be right there."

Satisfied that his message had been passed on, John turned and departed, not before giving Rick a look that promised volumes.

"We'd better go," Alice murmured.

"D'you know what you're going to do?" Rick asked.

Alice smiled faintly. "I'm going to get some answers."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	8. Determination

Determination

John pounced on Rick as he came up the stairs behind Alice. "I want a word with you," he said softly as Alice entered Frax's lab.

Rick glanced in that direction, but the lab door was already sliding shut. He sighed. "What's up?"

"I think you know," said John, offering Rick a cool glare.

Rick's shoulders slumped. "Is this where you threaten me and tell me to stay away from your sister?"

"Well," John drawled, "see, that all depends on you."

Rick's eyebrows climbed.

John smiled a little, showing teeth. "If you so much as look wrongly at Alice, there isn't a place you'll be able to hide. And if you hurt her..."

"I get the idea," Rick snapped.

"Do you?"

Rick took a pace forwards, trying to intimidate John with his greater height. "I get the idea."

John just glared back, unimpressed. "You'd better. For your sake."

"This a private pissing contest or can anyone join in?" Lexia asked dryly.

John visibly started at her sudden appearance and, to Rick's surprise, actually flushed in embarrassment. He opened his mouth to refute that charge, but Rick got in first.

"It's nothing, Lex."

Lexia snorted. "Yeah right."

"Just...shooting the breeze," John put in, still looking embarrassed and -- to Rick's further astonishment -- increasingly shy.

"And I'm Julia Roberts," Lexia shot back with a shake of her head. "Never mind. John, I thought you were gonna give me a few pointers. I don't like getting my rear kicked, especially by some stand-in ranger."

"Sure." 

Lexia nodded and headed back into the training room. John moved to follow her, leaving Rick standing in the hallway.

He snorted softly. "Same goes for you, buddy. You hurt her..."

John glanced over his shoulder. "Guess we've got an agreement, then."

~*~

The knock on the door of her hospital room caused Taylor to look up from the magazine she was half-heartedly thumbing. Somewhat to her surprise, Ben was standing in the doorway, looking tired and worn.

"Hey," he said, smiling faintly.

"Snuck past the dragon?" Taylor suggested.

"What, you mean that sweet duty nurse on the desk?" Ben asked, sitting down.

"Bitch," Taylor retorted. "Told me I had to stay here over night."

Ben lifted his eyebrows. "How come? I didn't think your shoulder was that serious."

"It's not."

"Then?" Ben frowned in concern and confusion. "What's wrong?"

Taylor looked down, unable to meet his gaze. "I...kinda fainted."

"You? Fainted?" Ben sounded both incredulous and worried. "Taylor...?" Taylor studied the magazine cover, not daring to look up. "Taylor, babe, what's wrong?" Damn, but he knew her well. "Taylor, you're scaring me." The fear was now ripe in his voice. "Taylor -- look at me. What's wrong?"

"I'm pregnant."

There was a long, long, long silence.

Taylor didn't dare look up now. Couldn't risk seeing Ben's reaction. They might have been together off and on for nearing ten years but they had no official commitment. The few times either one of them had brought that idea up; the other had gotten cold feet.

"And when were you planning on telling me?" Ben finally asked, clearly hurt. He swore. "Jesus, Taylor, you could have been seriously hurt today."

"I know."

"Is the baby all right?"

"She's fine."

"She?!" Ben swore again. "**How** pregnant are you?"

  
At that, Taylor managed a weak smile. "Six weeks." She heard Ben sigh in relief. "It...um...kinda a reflex...calling the baby her."

There was another, awkward silence.

"So what now?" Ben asked quietly.

~*~

Alice leaned on the window ledge, looking out of the window, not seeing the rest of the industrial compound of which Frax's complex made up a sizeable chunk. She had far too much to think about. 

Rick had been waiting for her when Frax had finished, but she wasn't ready to talk. He'd smiled a little shyly and offered to listen when she was ready. It was nice to know that Rick was there for her, but at the same time, it was weird. It was going to take a little while for her to truly be used to the idea of the triumvirate suddenly being her contemporaries rather than her kid brother and his friends. And it didn't help that Rick, as an adult, was definitely cute. She found herself blushing at that thought.

__

Just one more confusion on top of everything else, she thought wryly. The meeting with Frax played over and again in her mind, but the more she thought about things, the less sense anything made.

__

"You didn't kill anyone," Frax stated as she walked into his lab for the debriefing.

__

"There was no point to killing anyone. If we're targeting Time Force, why kill innocent bystanders if we don't have to?" she replied, puzzled.

Frax smiled at that and nodded but Alice didn't miss the strange flicker of 'something' in his expression. "What about your targets?"

"What about them?" Alice asked, bemused.

"Curious choices," said Frax.

"Tactically sound choices," Alice retorted mildly, and a little surprised at herself for not being annoyed.

"Oh?"

"Ian Foster, Danielle Hines -- they're friends of Eric Myers. The training centre is his current project. They were the fastest way to get his attention without risking collateral damage." Why wasn't she angry at the criticism? Alice frowned, even as she realised Frax looked almost annoyed by her reasoning.

"I see."

"What would you rather we did?" Alice enquired. "Blow up Bio-Lab's headquarters? The shopping mall?"

"Oh, no -- of course not."

That answer had been too fast, too pat, she realised. Frax had been hoping for them to cause complete and indiscriminate mayhem. Alice smiled wryly. _Not gonna happen._ But if Frax was hoping for that kind of thing... Her smile thinned into a grimace. The logical conclusion from that was that Frax wasn't being entirely straight with them about Time Force.

She snorted softly. 

And where did she get off being 'logical'? She'd never been logical. She'd always been impulsive. Whoever had done this to them had given her an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of tactics and strategy. It was less obvious than the information that had been given to Rick, Lexia and John, but possibly more insidious. It was slowly acting on her thought processes. Taming her temper. Curbing her tongue.

Mostly.

Hysterical outbursts in grain depots not withstanding.

And even **that**, as idiotic and near-terminal as it had been, was nowhere near the level her temper had been reaching. 

A memory fragment drifted free of the fog that still shrouded her memories. Of hundreds of Cyclobots. Of being grabbed. Of Rangers. Of being hurt. Of lashing out in anger at the one who'd hurt her. Of refusing to listen. 

__

"Shut up! You **hit** me -- you're just like Dirk."

Alice shuddered as the memory finally dispelled. It was all disjointed but it leant further credence to the idea that there was something lurking in her mind, something other than the plastic-quality memories. She sighed. Something more real and less black and white.

__

I need to talk -- but I don't think Rick can help me on this...

~*~

More awkward silence followed his question. Ben hated it. Hated not knowing what to do, or say. Give him a Cyclobot and he could hit it. Give him the end of the world and he'd fight tooth and nail to stop it. Could. Would. Had. But this? This was something far beyond his ken.

And not just him, he realised, looking at Taylor.

"Taylor, babe, please say something."

She slowly looked up at him. "Ben, I don't know," she said helplessly.

He offered her a smile. The patented Johnson charm-offensive smile. The smile that said 'I can make this better for you'. But that smile faded as he realised he couldn't 'make this better'. "Me either," he admitted.

"I...I'm not sure I want to keep her...it."

And suddenly Ben understood. "You weren't going to tell me at all." He thought he'd been shocked when she'd first said the word. He was wrong. He could feel a chill wrapping itself around him, invading every pore. "You were going to have an abortion and..."

"No!" Taylor cut in. "It wasn't like that -- I wouldn't..."

"Look me in the eye and say that," Ben answered quietly.

Taylor looked away.

"At least I know where I stand." He moved to leave.

"Ben, I'm sorry." Her voice was soft. So unlike her normal tones. So broken. So scared. "I know I've messed up over this."

~*~

The faint crunch of gravel was all the warning Rocky had before one hand came down on his shoulder while the other clamped itself across his mouth.

"I don't want to hurt you," hissed the hands' owner. "Gotta make this look like I'm kidnapping you."

Before Rocky could do anything, the world shimmered and his stomach lurched as some form of teleportation device kicked in. Moments later, he found himself standing on a bluff overlooking a cove. He recognised the area as being the coast just to the north of Silverhills.

"Sorry," apologised his captor, relinquishing her hold. "I needed to talk to you."

Slowly Rocky turned to face her. Alice. 

"And we couldn't have had this discussion somewhere more comfortable exactly why?" he asked, gesturing to their surroundings. "Or are you planning on using me to bait some kind of trap?" Alice looked startled, as though she hadn't been expecting him to suggest that. "Alice, give me a little credit. You've just teleported me thirty miles. Think I could have guessed."

"I..." She stopped. "This was dumb. I'm sorry. I..."

"Stop," Rocky commanded. Alice's mouth closed with an automatic snap. "Breathe."

"I'm not a little kid any more," she objected.

At that, Rocky actually found himself laughing. She looked mildly offended. "I know, but last time I saw you, you were sixteen and in a snit over tongue piercing. This is a lot to take in." Alice's shoulders sagged at that, offence muting into sheepishness. "Now, kiddo, how about you explain what the hell we're doing up here?"

~*~

Taylor cringed at the look on Ben's face.

"I didn't know how to tell you," she whispered. "I was scared. Am scared. Didn't want things to change between us. I thought..." She shook her head. "It crossed my mind I could do that. Just never tell you. I'd be lying if I said it didn't." She looked up, forcing herself to meet his accusatory glare. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider it." He straightened. "For all of an hour when I left the clinic on Saturday morning."

Ben froze. "Saturday?" he croaked.

Taylor nodded. "I saw the doc on Saturday morning."

"You didn't know before then?"

She shook her head. "I've been late before...heck, I haven't been 'regular' since I was a ranger. Just...never quite this late."

"Why didn't you say anything sooner?"

"I didn't know how to. And...and then the shit hit the fan...with the kids...and then today..." Taylor trailed off. 

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Taylor tried to work out what Ben was thinking from his expression, but that was carefully schooled, not giving anything away.

"I should go," he finally said, quietly. "I need to think." He turned towards the door, paused and turned back. "When are they discharging you?"

"Lunchtime tomorrow."

Ben offered her a weak smiled. "I'll pick you up."

It took her several moments to realise what he'd said. "You're not...leaving-leaving?"

Ben shook his head. "I'm shocked, I'm hurt...but I'm a part of this and I'm not gonna walk away. **We'll** work this out."

~*~

"It's a mess," Alice finished. "And...I don't know what's real, what's fake...I'm not even sure I know who to trust."

"You're talking to me," Rocky pointed out.

"I figure you're far enough out of Eric's main circle that what I remember about you isn't fake." Alice hesitated a moment. "And I could always talk to you before."

Rocky sighed. "I don't know what you want me to tell you."

"The truth."

"You're being manipulated. But you already figured that. You wanna know who by. I can't answer that. All I can tell you is whatever this guy's told you -- about Eric being the one behind this -- is bull." Alice opened her mouth to say something but Rocky just shook his head. "That man would die for you, Alice. You and your brother."

Alice shivered, a little surprised at the vehemence in Rocky's voice. "I want to believe you."

"Then believe me," Rocky answered. "Believe me, kiddo, because it's the simple truth. And it's the same way with Wes and Jen. All four of you kids are loved very much. The last thing any of your parents would do is hurt you. In any way."

Alice nodded slowly. She could feel the honesty in that statement. "Which means that Frax is the one who's playing us," she concluded.

"Or his boss," said Rocky quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"There's someone else behind this. Someone who wants to get at your parents."

"Why?"

Rocky sighed and gestured at the ground. "Mind if I sit down? It's been a long day."

Alice smiled faintly, dropping to the ground herself. "No kidding."

Rocky matched her smile as he sat. "So. You know your parents were...are rangers." Alice nodded. "And I guess you're probably old enough to remember Ransik?"

Alice frowned for a moment, raiding her memory. "I think so. Kinda." She sighed. "Whatever 'they' did to me's really screwed up my memory."

Rocky nodded. "Kim said you didn't remember her."

Alice stiffened at the name. "Kim?"

~*~

Freeman Hauritz enjoyed working the night shift of the Silver Guardians. Even if chaos was reigning during the day, the night shift was calm and quiet and, he had to admit, the anti-social hours suited him nicely.

__

Of course, he reflected sourly as the phone began to ring, _there's always the exception that proves the rule._

Reaching forwards, he picked up the receiver. "Good evening, Silver Guardians, how may I help you?"

"Sorry to bother you," said an apologetic sounding woman. "I don't suppose my husband's still there is he?"

Hauritz's eyebrows lifted. "Your husband would be...?"

"Sorry -- Rocky DeSantos. He had a meeting with Commander Myers."

Hauritz grimaced. Just because he was on night shift, didn't mean he didn't know what had gone on during the day. "I see. Hold on one moment, I'll check." He put the call on hold and checked the security board. He had a nasty feeling that everyone present at that meeting had long since left. Sure enough, the security board revealed that Conference Room One was locked up and alarmed. He turned back to the call. "Mrs DeSantos -- your husband left some time ago."

There was a lengthy pause on the other end of the line then, "Are you sure?"

Hauritz sighed. "Yes I am."

"Is there anything you can check?"

__

Given what's happened today, I'd better go and check the surveillance logs for the parking lot, Hauritz decided. "There is. Can I take a phone number so that I can call you back? It'll take a few minutes."

"Oh -- yes, of course. Thank you."

Hauritz wrote the number down. "I'll call you back in about five minutes."

"Thank you." 

Hauritz put the receiver down and hastily crossed the control room to check the CCTV coverage of the car park. Part of his job on this graveyard shift was to keep an eye on the various security camera feeds but by a common consent, the parking lot wasn't a feed to be monitored unless the assorted motion sensors installed in the lot detected movement outside of normal hours.

As he scrolled back through the tape, he recalled the detectors had been set off at nine o'clock that evening. That had been the break-up of Commander Myers' meeting. He hadn't checked the feed at that time, knowing that it would be Commander Myers, his wife, Commander Collins, Mr DeSantos and the other Commander Collins leaving. At least that gave him a time to check.

Hitting that mark, he started to play the tape, displaying the images from the four parking lot cameras on the four display screens. Two were immediately discarded as they clearly displayed completely empty sections of parking lot. Of the other two views, both displayed the last three cars in the lot so he split his attention between the two screens and waited.

Sure enough, a minute or so past nine o'clock, the five meeting attendees exited the building. Hauritz quickly identified Mr DeSantos and followed his progress into the lot and towards his car -- some sort of older model Honda, he thought. Commander Myers drove away with his wife, in his car, closely followed by the two Collinses in their car. So Mr DeSantos was actually last to leave.

He continued to watch...and felt his heart stop as he saw what happened barely seconds after everyone else had gone.

"Oh shit!"

~*~

Rocky hesitated, clearly debating what to say. "Kim's your mom -- the Pink Ranger this evening."

Alice wasn't entirely shocked by that. Instead, she nodded. "I kinda figured she had to be. Guess only a mom can make your full name sound like a battle cry!"

Rocky smiled faintly. "It's not just your full name Kim can do that to." Alice made no comment. He sighed. "Point is, your parents have enemies. Guess one of them's decided to get creative."

"They're not gonna get away with that," Alice stated. She frowned for a moment as a plan began to form. "Do the 'rents have a way of getting this shit reversed?"

Rocky nodded. "I think so -- Lucas seemed to have some ideas about it, certainly."

Alice nodded again. "Good."

Rocky looked startled. "Good?"

"Think I want to be robbed of five years of my life and spend the rest of it with bullshit for memories?" Alice queried. "Thank you, no. I wanna get this over with."

"Well to do that, you're going to need a plan -- and you're going to need to work with your parents without arousing Frax's suspicions," Rocky pointed out.

Alice smiled. "I can do that."

~*~

Conflicting thoughts poured through Eric's mind as he pulled into his garage. On the one hand there was the certain knowledge that Alice was one of this new team of Rangers who had destroyed the training centre and caused damage elsewhere in the city, not to mention injured three Guardians badly enough that they'd been admitted to hospital. It was not an unreasonable assumption to figure the other three Rangers were the other three missing children but that wasn't confirmed yet. On the other hand was his promise to Alice and Kimberly when they'd first become a family, that he would never, ever hurt them. Could he face her?

"Can you fight her if you need to?" Kimberly asked from the passenger seat as he killed the engine.

Eric leaned against the steering wheel and put his head into his hands. "That's what's killing me."

"What do you mean?"

"I know I can...know I **will** if the time comes. I know what's at stake, I know what needs to be done, I know the objective... How fucked up is this? That I can just sit and analyse this whole situation like it was some sort of goddamned military mission in some godforsaken place to get rid of some asshole warlord that no-one cares about anyway..."

"Eric, hon, look at me," Kimberly commanded, cutting off his diatribe. When he didn't move, she put a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder and forced him to look round. "Alice is our daughter. I don't like this situation at all, but I also know what has to be done. If she...they...keep this up, they have to be stopped before innocent people are involved."

Hearing his own logic and reasoning spoken by Kimberly was disconcerting. Eric had been prepared for everything **but** this and he didn't know how to react. Then, sparing him, his cell phone started to ring. Kimberly rolled her eyes and smiled a little. He answered her expression with a wry smile of his own as he unclipped the noisy device.

But as his eyes fell on the display, any traces of levity left him. The caller ID was that of the SGHQ. That could only mean bad news.

"Myers," he said.

"Commander Myers um..." Hauritz hesitated. "I think Mr DeSantos has been kidnapped."

"Who by?" Eric managed to ask.

"It looked...kinda like your daughter."

~*~

__

Could this get any worse? Wes found himself wondering as he made his way to the security post at SGHQ, having been recalled to the building by a terse phone call from Eric, explaining the new situation.

Why on earth would Alice have kidnapped Rocky? In a situation that made little sense anyway, this truly was bizarre. Unless she was somehow looking to further hurt Eric.

Which, Wes realised as he reached the post, was always a good possibility.

Eric and Kimberly had already arrived and Freeman Hauritz was already replaying the relevant footage.

"That's her," Eric agreed. "Damn it."

"Why would she do this?" Kimberly queried. "Rocky isn't a Silver Guardian."

"No," Wes agreed, joining the conversation, "but he is a friend of yours and Eric's. So far, everything and everyone she's attacked has been connected to you."

Eric nodded, the reluctant realisation written on his face. "She's not just pursuing Time Force, she's after me personally."

"More than that," said a new voice, "she's challenged you to one-on-one combat tomorrow morning."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	9. Found

Found

Rocky watched the reactions of the occupants of the security post with interest.

The unfortunate Silver Guardian who was presumably in charge of the night shift looked about ready to faint. Kimberly and Wes both jumped, Kimberly giving a tiny squeak of surprise. Eric, who had his back to Rocky's position, tensed then relaxed, presumably as he identified the speaker. 

Slowly Eric turned to face him. 

"What happened?" Eric asked.

Rocky offered a smile. "She wanted to talk to me."

"She kidnapped you!" Wes objected.

Rocky shrugged a little. "Yes and no." He sighed. "She wanted to talk to me and she isn't sure if he's watching them or not. She wanted to make it look good."

"This guy have a name?" Wes asked.

Rocky offered a sheepish smile. "Sorry. Frax -- he is the guy behind this."

"Not bad for a dead guy," muttered Kimberly.

"What did she want to talk about?" Eric asked.

"About you. She's figured that a lot of the stuff she's got floating in her head is bogus. She wanted to talk to someone who could confirm or deny and someone who didn't already have an axe to grind."

"Someone she's been confiding in since she was a kid," Kimberly filled in.

"Someone she figured her memories wouldn't be doctored about," Eric finished.

Rocky nodded. "Exactly."

There was a long silence after that. Rocky could see that both Eric and Kimberly were struggling to find a way to ask the obvious next question. It was Wes who finally said,

"And what did she say when you told her?"

"She believed me." He could see the minute relaxation in Eric's posture, the tiny lightening in his expression, that told Rocky just how much it meant to the other man to know Alice knew the truth.

There was another, lengthy pause.

"Did she say who the other rangers were?" Wes asked quietly.

Rocky sighed. That seemed to be answer enough for everyone. They might have known since Alice's identity was revealed hours earlier that the other Rangers were likely to be John, Rick and Lexia, but there had still been a shred of doubt. That was gone now. He winced. "Sorry."

Wes shook his head. "It's not your fault. We're just gonna have to fry the bastard behind this."

"And," Rocky put in quietly, "here's how we do it..."

~*~

"What do you think?" Alice asked softly as she finished explaining the plan to Rick. They were both sitting in the space under the stairs again -- it seemed to be the most private place in the whole of Frax's compound.

"Are you sure?" he asked just as quietly. "You really think you can trust them this much?"

A moment later Frax's face appeared where John's had earlier. "It's generally polite to report in when you've been out setting up the enemy."

~*~

Eric shivered. This was déjà vu. Barely twelve hours after the first showdown in the grain depot warehouse, they were back. This time, though, it wasn't for real.

He hoped.

Part of him wanted to believe Rocky -- and by extension, Alice. She was his daughter, his family. Families trusted one another. But there was a part of him that was wary. There was so much room for this plan to go wrong. So many unknown variables.

He hated it.

Standing either side of him, Kimberly and Wes were both standing rigid. Both were as conflicted about this as he was.

Stalling further observations, the four Vengeance Rangers arrived via teleportation. Now that he knew who they were, their stances made a horrible kind of sense. Alice was obviously protective of the others as she stood to the fore of the group. Given the general build of the Black Ranger, he had to be John. The way he'd angled himself, covering Alice, seemed to make that point. John had always been fiercely protective of his sister. Rick, the Red Ranger by a process of elimination, was doing the same for Lexia.

It was both heart-warming and heartbreaking.

Alice stepped forward. "You know what I want."

Eric matched her. "I do."

"Then let's dance."

She settled into a ready stance, waiting. He matched her, taking a moment to plot through how this was going to work.

She started forwards, intending to make the first move. Eric smiled a little beneath his helmet. Taking a step forwards himself, he vaulted over her, twisting so that he landed just behind her and facing her. She whirled around, not willing to give him any kind of advantage, but even as she moved, he brought his fists to bear in a couple of vicious looking punches. She blocked them, albeit clumsily.

__

Now I know the level I'm fighting at... The next few blows, a combination of kicks and punches, still looked vicious but were at half power. Alice easily blocked them and then essayed an attack of her own. Her blows weren't as skilfully pulled as his -- but then again, he'd had years of practice and there was little danger of her doing any serious damage.

Alice twisted into a super kick. Eric swayed to the right, avoiding the kick and tucking into a roll that brought him back to his feet in front of her, ready to attack again. As he moved to punch, she was the one twisting away, letting his blow slide past her, connecting with nothing but fresh air. Even at half power, basic physics applied and he found himself taken off balance. Rather than fight it and stumble, he continued forwards, tucking into another roll.

This time, though, he came to his feet into the path of a barrage of blows as she followed up, not giving him a chance to get an even footing. Again he smiled a little even as he blocked her punches. The purely objective part of his mind was impressed by her obviously growing confidence. This was going to work.

"Why don't you just give it up, old man?" Alice jibed. "You're goin' down."

That was his cue. Eric tensed as he continued to block her blows, waiting for her to make the move. It wasn't long in coming. Driving him backwards with her blows, she suddenly dropped into a crouch and swept his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the concrete.

As he went, he sent a sub-vocal command to demorph so that it appeared as if he was seriously weakened by the fight. This was the part of the plan he really hated, because as he hit the ground, back in civvies, he was acutely aware of how vulnerable he was now. Particularly as Alice landed on his chest, effectively pinning him to the ground.

Her fist was poised above his head.

The moment seemed to stretch out into long, long minutes. Eric could only stare up into the faceplate of Alice's helmet, feeling vulnerable. He could dislodge her easily enough -- she wasn't very heavy -- but that would wreck the plan.

Why was she hesitating?

__

Any time now, Alice...

"And now we finish this," she growled.

Eric had the chance to note that something had gone drastically wrong with this plan as she ripped the Quantum Morpher from his wrist, then her poised fist crashed down into his temple and everything went black.

~*~

It all happened in slow motion for Wes.

He saw the fight come to the planned conclusion. Saw Eric demorph as he hit the concrete. Saw Alice take up a position that pinned Eric to the concrete...and felt the hairs lift on the back of his neck. This wasn't right. Her fist poised above Eric's head. This wasn't the plan. She tore off his morpher.

  
"No!" Kimberly's scream galvanised him.

He started to move but it was too late. Alice brought her fist down on Eric's unprotected head. Then, even as he took a step forwards, she, the other Vengeance Rangers and Eric vanished in a haze of teleportation sparkles.

"No!" Kimberly's second scream was hysterical. "Eric!"

Wes caught her as she surged forwards, towards the now empty spot on the concrete. "Kim, they've taken him."

"No! You bastard!" She fought against him.

Wes took the blows until he could safely trap her flailing arms. "Kim -- they've taken him but **we** are gonna get him back." Her struggles slowed a little. "C'mon -- Lucas will be calling in soon. He's gonna have the solution to this mess. You'll see."

Kimberly tilted her head to look up at him. Wes couldn't see her expression thanks to her helmet but he could well imagine the death in it. "He'd better or I'll start tearing this town apart."

~*~

As Eric came round, several things made themselves known. His head pounded. He was lying on his back, trapping his arms, which had been tied together at the wrist, against the floor. His ankles were also bound together.

__

Kim is going to kill me.

What had happened in the grain depot came back to him in snatches. 

The obvious conclusion was that Alice had either had a change of heart or had just been stringing Rocky along in the first place, but that didn't sit right with him. Neither option really seemed like Alice -- at least, not the Alice he knew. But did he really know this Alice?

Feigning unconsciousness for the benefit of anyone present wherever he was now, Eric tried the bonds at his wrists. To his surprise, they were loose.

"Dad, don't." The words were hissed into his ear by an unfamiliar baritone voice, even as fingers were gently pressed against his throat, presumably checking his pulse.

The voice alone was enough to force his eyes open regardless. Eric found himself looking up at John. It had to be John, although it could equally have been a window on the past. His past. The only real physical difference between John and himself at the same age was the haircut. When he'd been nineteen or twenty, he'd had a regulation buzz-cut.

There was a long moment when their eyes met. Eric half got the impression John was trying to tell him something, but whatever it was, he didn't understand.

"Prisoner's fit for interrogation." The harsh, unfeeling words were at complete odds with the expression on John's face.

__

What the hell?

"Good. You may leave."

The new voice had to belong to Frax. Yet it sounded different to the voice Eric remembered the maniacal robot possessing. More real, somehow.

John cast him another look, clearly trying to communicate something beyond what had been said. Then, as John got to his feet, he mouthed: _Alice!_

Alice what?

"So, the famous Eric Myers."

Eric's attention was drawn away from John and that conundrum and to the nerdy-looking...

"Who the hell are you?"

The man laughed, his over-prominent Adam's apple bobbing rapidly. "Really, I did think you'd be a little quicker than this. I was told you were sharp. Obviously your powers were over-estimated by my master if a twenty-one year old girl can beat you."

"You bastard," Eric snarled.

The Adam's apple bobbed again as the man laughed once more. "Oh, very probably. Who am I? I'm Frax -- or at least, his human beginnings."

"You're dead."

"I was -- but I got better." Frax -- if that truly was who the man was, and Eric was far from convinced -- moved to crouch beside him. "You see, I was made an offer I couldn't refuse by a man who has a big score to settle. I expect you heard about how Ransik tried to kill me."

Almost in spite of himself, Eric nodded. He had heard the story -- as he recalled, Jen had visited him in hospital while he was recovering from a punctured lung just after Ransik had been defeated, and as they'd talked, that particular story had come out.

Frax smiled, displaying a full set of teeth. "Well, let's just say, that story has a twist. A very big, temporal twist."

~*~

Jen's eyes widened as she saw the reddened rings around Kimberly's eyes but then understanding came, along with a leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach, as no Eric followed Kimberly and Wes into conference room one.

"What happened?" she asked.

Wes slowly shook his head. "We don't know."

Into the suddenly awkward silence, the sound of the conference room door opening was unbelievably loud.

"I'm not late, am I?"

For an instant, Jen thought it was Eric. So did Kimberly, if her expression was anything to judge by. But the instant passed and they both realised it was Zaskin.

"No -- you're right on time, Michael," said Wes.

Almost as if to underline that point, the holoscreen flared into life. Jen could see Lucas almost conducting a headcount of those present and watched as his face contorted into a grimace as he realised who was missing.

"What happened?" Lucas asked quietly.

~*~

Frax stood up and began circling Eric's prone form like a hungry shark.

"It was all his idea -- creating the robot," he mused. "Just after Ransik had left me for dead, he showed up in my lab. He helped to heal me. In return, he helped me create the robot you met." He snorted. "People are so silly to believe the cockamamie story it was programmed with. It wasn't a cyborg at all -- just a clever piece of programming."

"If you have a point, get to it," Eric retorted. "Or just get on with it and kill me."

Suddenly, Frax was back down, crouching, grabbing hold of his shirtfront. "Kill you -- oh, I've got something much better in mind for you. You see, he gave me all kinds of latitude as to how I put you down. And I think..." There were footsteps and a new person loomed over Eric.

Alice. Her face blank.

"Yes. The daughter destroys the father after he almost destroyed her only days before." Frax cackled. "There's a lovely symmetry to that. A pity you're not really in a position to appreciate it."

Alice produced something that looked rather akin to a Silver Guardian blaster and aimed it.

Eric felt his heart stop as he watched the aim-point of the blaster move slowly up his chest as she fixed her aim. He wanted to close his eyes, not wanting to see her pull the trigger. At the same time, he couldn't look away.

Couldn't take his eyes off the still moving blaster sight.

Couldn't fully grasp, for a start, that she was no longer aiming the weapon at him.

She was aiming it...

Eric's eyes widened as he realised who she **was** aiming it at.

Frax.

"Ya know," she said, "I've got a better idea."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	10. Family

Family

"Eric, now!"

Unsure of what was actually going on, Eric knew a cue when he heard one. Before Frax could register Alice's command, Eric broke the bonds around his wrists and grabbed Frax in a sleeper-hold headlock.

"Say good night, Frax."

Frax fought the hold but Eric clung on, steadily applying pressure until the lack of blood and oxygen flowing to Frax's brain had the desired effect and the man passed out.

"Is he dead?" Alice asked as Eric released the hold and Frax slumped forwards, insensate.

"No -- he'll wake up in about half an hour, with one hell of a headache. Speaking of which...?" Eric looked meaningfully at Alice. "What the hell was that little stunt in the grain depot about?"

Alice shook her head as she holstered the blaster. "I'll explain everything but we've gotta go." She crouched at his feet and released his ankles. "This place is wired to go."

Eric's eyes widened. "Go?"

"Lex's idea. Ask her. But later!"

Eric rolled to his feet, but for all her hurry he noted that Alice hesitated long and hard before offering him some help. He lifted an eyebrow at that, but made no comment. He realised, for the first time, that they were both standing in some sort of lab.

"Frax's work room," Alice explained, handing back the Quantum Morpher.

The door burst open and John, Lexia and Rick sprinted in.

"Time to go, Ali," Lexia stated, giving Eric a disconcertingly nervous glance.

"Where to?" asked Rick.

"SGHQ?" Eric suggested, then nearly kicked himself at the nervous looks he received from all sides.

Alice bit her lip. "Are the rest of the 'rents there?"

Eric glanced at his watch, noting it was coming up to half past ten. "They should be."

Alice chewed her lip again.

"Really -- we **have** to go!" said Lexia.

"Yeah," she said, decisively. "SGHQ." Alice instructed.

But no-one moved.

"Screw this!" Lexia exclaimed. "Rick, grab Frax. John, grab your dad. We need to get out of here **now**!" So saying, she grabbed Alice.

Definitely Jen's daughter! Eric found himself thinking as he felt John take hold of his arm. Then everything faded out of sight.

~*~

"I'm sorry to hit you with more bad news," Alicia Roberts was visibly apologetic, "but there it is."

Wes felt sickened. "What the hell reason did that evil woman have for creating this..." But he trailed off, not having words to describe it.

Jackie Bennett offered a shrug. "Sometimes scientists get so caught up in their work they don't think about the consequences of what they're doing, just the thrill of the pure research."

"That's certainly true," Zaskin agreed. "But even so..."

"Even so, the bitch has quite a track record," said Jen bitterly. "So, what now?"

Lucas opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment the conference room door opened and Miller entered.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but I thought you should know there's been some kind of explosion on the industrial complex to the north of the city."

"We figured leaving his lab intact wasn't a great idea," said a new voice.

Everyone froze at the voice. To Wes' ears it was both familiar and unfamiliar, as though the last time he'd heard it, the voice's owner had been considerably younger. Slowly he looked round, aware of Jen and Kimberly both doing the same. But even when he did, he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

"Dad, say something!" Rick finally begged.

"Mommy?" Lexia took a nervous half-step forwards, then threw caution to the wind and flung herself at Jen, sobbing incoherently.

Jen had no hesitation in wrapping her arms around Lexia, hugging her. "It's OK -- you're home now."

This was real. They were really standing there. This wasn't a dream. Wes found himself standing up and moving towards Rick, but as he got there, he didn't know quite how to react to his suddenly six foot plus, twenty-year-old son. Rick settled the matter by wrapping his arms around Wes in a crushing hug.

"Oh!" The sudden arrival of the four 'kids' and Eric was too much for Kimberly as she fainted.

"Kim!" Eric dived forwards and caught her just as she toppled from her chair.

Zaskin coughed a little, clearly embarrassed. "How 'bout I... Paul...um..."

Wes was vaguely aware of Zaskin and Miller both leaving, taking the holoscreen with them, but his attention was mainly centred on Lexia, who had now flung herself at him in another tearful hug.

~*~

Half an hour and a pot of Gina's famous Java later, everyone was more ready to give and receive the explanations.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Eric asked, as Kimberly retook her seat.

She offered him a smile. "I'm fine."

"I thought fainting was the pregnant woman's prerogative," Jen joked.

Lexia's jaw dropped open. Rick stared.

"You're pregnant?" exclaimed Alice.

"I'm not going to be the youngest?" Lexia finally managed.

"I'm getting **another** sister?" Rick groaned, although that tailed off into a squeak of pain as Lexia whapped him on the shoulder.

"Yes, yes and it's a little early to tell," Wes replied.

"So that's why you're not the Pink Ranger," John observed.

Jen nodded. "Morphing while pregnant, bad idea."

"Why? What happens?" asked Alice.

There was an electric pause.

"You're not..." Kimberly began, looking horrified.

"You don't think..." Eric was similarly aghast.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Anyone want to tell me when I'd have had the chance?" There was no answer to that. "I'm just asking for future reference."

"How about," Jen suggested, "you ask me later -- don't wanna make the guys turn green."

"TMI," Rick murmured.

Jen spread her hands in a 'there you go' gesture. Alice snickered.

"So," said Eric, "does anyone feel like they could explain this morning? Alice?"

Alice shifted a little nervously in her seat. "Improvisation?"

"If punching my lights out is your idea of improvisation, we need to seriously work on your skills," Eric retorted.

Alice sighed. "It's kinda complicated...see...I had to square visiting Uncle Rocky with Frax, so I had a skeleton plan in mind when I went to see him. I could have fleshed it out two ways, depending on what Uncle Rocky had to say." Eric nodded slowly. "When I heard what Uncle Rocky was saying...I believed him...which pretty much told me how the plan was gonna go...but I still needed something to tell Frax..."

_"It's generally polite to report in when you've been out setting up the enemy," Frax stated as his face appeared._

Mentally crossing her fingers, Alice smiled. "I'm sorry -- I did look in your lab, but you weren't there."

Frax smiled back. "Ah -- pardon me. How did it go?"

"Like a dream," Alice answered. "DeSantos bought it hook, line and sinker. He's gone to tell Myers. By nine o'clock tomorrow morning, you'll have him."

"Excellent!" Frax rubbed his hands together. Frax walked away, calling over his shoulder, "You should get some sleep. Tomorrow is a big day."

Once Frax was out of earshot, Alice sighed and sagged back against Rick.

"You did it perfectly," he murmured.

Eric whistled. "Deviousness, thy name is Alice Megan Cunningham Myers."

Alice blushed. "You're not...um...upset that I lied?"

"Alice, honey," said Kimberly, "it's not like you had a hell of a lot of choice."

A slightly awkward silence fell at that.

"So...when can we get rid of the garbage?" Alice asked eventually. "I just want to get back to normal and forget this ever happened."

Eric hesitated a moment. He could hear something unsaid in her words and he realised, consciously at least, that at no time so far this morning had she actually called him 'dad'. He shivered. "Do I want to know what you've got floating in your head about me right now?"

Alice shook her head, the expression on her face begging him not to force the issue. Wisely, Eric backed off.

"So what does happen next?" asked Rick.

There was a polite cough from the doorway. Eric craned his neck and saw Zaskin, holding a small device. "I believe," said the scientist, "this might help."

"What is it?" enquired Wes.

"It's a crude version of a thirty-first century memory recovery device."

"You've built future tech, in an hour, in your lab?" said Jen, dubious.

Zaskin grinned puckishly. "Hardly. It's a modified white noise generator."

"Which is going to do what, exactly?" asked Alice.

"It emits a constant pulse of sound," Zaskin replied. "Normally, that would be multi-frequency. Dr Bennett and Dr Roberts have had me set it up so that it only emits sound at a frequency just above human hearing range..."

"To break down the Mimozin and Remhinderazine left behind by the memory adaptation, releasing the trapped or adapted memories," Jen finished.

Zaskin looked startled. "Ye-es."

Jen smiled wryly. "Been there, done that, gotten the migraine from it."

"Migraine doesn't sound good," said Lexia.

"But this works?" asked John.

Zaskin nodded. "Should do, yes."

"Worked on me," Jen contributed, "and I was memory adapted when I was six."

Eric watched as John, Rick, Lexia and Alice exchanged looks.

"Let's get this over with," said Alice.

"It might be best if only the four targets are in the room," Zaskin suggested.

"You think we're going to let them out of our sight again?" asked Wes.

"We've just got them back," added Kimberly.

Zaskin looked nonplussed. "But..."

"Dad," said Rick, "we're not going anywhere."

"Promise," added Alice. "I just want this stuff out of my mind."

"Me too," said John.

"Me three," contributed Lexia.

"Besides," Eric put in, "there's someone in the holding cells downstairs that we'd like to have a word with."

Wes lifted his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Frax."

Eric watched as the realisation swept across the faces of Jen, Wes and Kimberly.

"Let me at that bastard," Jen muttered.

~*~

Frax looked up at the sound of footsteps. He didn't know where his plan had gone wrong -- but gone wrong it most assuredly had. Betrayed by the brats. That blonde haired vixen had duped him.

"Well, well, well. Dr Ferricks."

The voice was hard and sarcastic. Eric Myers. Frax looked up and saw that with Myers was his accursed wife -- if her ties to her daughter had just been a little less he could have finessed things without having to completely erase the woman from their minds.

"He looks too comfortable," muttered someone.

Frax's eyes widened as both Wesley and Jennifer Collins came into view as well. "Come to gloat?"

"Hardly," Myers retorted. "Who set you up for this?"

Frax sneered. "I'm not saying anything."

"Oh, you'll talk," said Myers.

"Or what? You'll kill me? You wouldn't dare."

Myers smiled. "Wouldn't I?" 

In spite of himself, Frax shuddered. "You're honourable," he protested.

"Only up to a point," Collins hissed. "And you're beyond that. You're scum."

"Personally," said Myers' wife in an almost conversational tone, "I'd like to string him up by the balls."

Frax blanched. "You wouldn't."

"You kidnapped our children. Used illegal technology on them. Tortured them..."

"I didn't torture them!"

"What the hell would you call aging them by ten years and filling their heads with bullshit memories?" snapped Collins.

"That's torture in anyone's language," Myers' wife spat. 

"Y'know," Myers drawled, "I had a run in a few years back with a guy who had a thing for physical torture. I picked up all kinds of nasty little tricks from him, and if you don't start talking, I'm gonna try those tricks out on you. Of course, I can't guarantee to get them right first time. It's a little different being the one giving out the abuse...might end up breaking a few more bones than strictly necessary..."

"All right!" Frax yelped. "I'll talk."

"Knew you'd see it my way." Frax just glared at him. "Now. Who set you up for this?"

"He calls himself The Master," Frax answered. "I..." But his words suddenly dried up. His throat seemed to be constricting. Breathing became impossible. His sight blurred. The edges of his consciousness greyed and darkened.

"Shit!" The distant curse from Myers was followed by the faint sounds of the cell door opening but Frax knew with sharp clarity that nothing they could do would help him.

~*~

Alice wasn't sure how the memory recovery was going to work. Whether the false memories would just fade out of existence or if they would remain in some modified form. The truth, though, proved to be much more uncomfortable. As the process began, the false memories seemed to swell and intensify until they were in harsh Technicolor.

She wanted to look away. Wanted to close her eyes to the images. Wanted to do anything but relieve this ersatz life, but the process wouldn't let her. In the ten-minute duration of the recovery, every single fake memory forced itself to the forefront of her consciousness. Every last, hateful image. Every last, counterfeit action.

And then it was like a bubble bursting. Between one heartbeat and the next, the memories were gone. Not just faded, not modified, gone, leaving behind an unpleasant headache and a nasty aftertaste. In their place were much realer recollections. Her parents. Plural. Together. Cyclobots. Lots of them. In a parking lot...

Alice felt her mouth dry up in embarrassment and shame. This was her fault. That stupid tantrum she'd thrown on Friday night. Telling Eric he was like Dirk. If she hadn't done that... If Eric had been home, like any other Saturday, there would have been no way Frax could have abducted her. This whole mess would never have happened. None of this...

~*~

Eric started to open the cell door the second he realised Frax was genuinely choking, but even as he opened the door, he realised he wasn't going to be able to do anything. Frax's face had turned purple and worse, it seemed to be...melting?

Eric could only watch in shock as Frax literally melted into a pile of clothing and pinkish goo.

"Ew," Kimberly murmured. "That is so gross."

"Replicant," Jen identified.

"Which means what?" asked Wes.

"It means that this wasn't really Dr Ferricks. It was some kind of programmed clone." Jen grimaced.

"Which means?" Eric asked.

Jen shook her head. "Nothing good, that's for sure."

~*~

Taylor waited nervously. As soon as Ben arrived, the doctors were willing to discharge her, but not until he arrived.

And what if, in his thinking the previous night, he'd decided he wanted nothing more to do with her? What if she'd completely ruined things? What if...

"Hey -- sorry I'm late."

Taylor jumped, so lost in her panic that she hadn't heard Ben arrive.

He looked mildly hurt at her reaction. "Ready to go?"

"Ben -- I'm sorry."

Ben waved it off. "It's OK."

"It's not OK. This whole situation's a mess...and I know I've gotten things wrong. Just..."

"Just what?" Ben asked quietly. "I'm here, I'm ready to listen...to talk. There isn't any more I can do until you talk to me...and stop jumping to conclusions."

Taylor winced. "I'm..."

Ben shook his head. "Uh-uh. Don't say it unless you really mean it."

~*~

"So what do we do now?" Wes asked as they made their way slowly back to the conference room.

"Need to speak to Lucas," Eric answered. "Find out what the status of those morphers is -- and what's going to happen to the kids now."

"The aging's permanent," said Jen quietly. "That was what Lucas was telling us when you arrived."

Wes noted that Eric didn't look entirely surprised. "In that case, one of us needs to get onto the official stuff -- their legal status."

"I'll do that -- Dad's probably got contacts we can use," Wes offered.

"Then there's school and clothes and..." Eric stopped in the middle of the hallway. "I can't believe I'm just rationally doing this!"

"This is nuts," Kimberly agreed. "And it doesn't have to all be done at once. I for one just want to have a couple of days, at home, with the kids. No panics, no stresses -- just...time to...be a normal family."

"Or as normal as we can get," Jen contributed.

Eric sighed, shoulders sagging. "You're right." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Going home sounds good."

~*~

"So what're we going to do?" Alice asked.

She, John, Rick and Lexia had congregated in the Myers family living room a couple of days after Frax's demise. They would learn their official fate in half an hour or so, when Lucas would be contacting them, but Alice wanted to know what the others wanted to do -- if they were given the option.

"How do you mean, Ali?" Rick asked. "The 'rents will probably tell us what's gonna happen."

Alice shook her head. "I don't think they will. Not over this."

"Have they told you something already?" asked Lexia.

Again, Alice shook her head. "No -- just a feeling I've got. I think they know what this Lucas guy's gonna say, though."

"And I don't think it's good news -- as far as they're concerned," John contributed. "Mom and dad have been looking like dying ducks in a thunderstorm -- at least they have when they think we haven't been paying attention."

"Same with ours," agreed Rick. "So what do you mean, Ali?"

"Well..." Alice chewed her lip. "Do you guys want to have this aging thing reversed?"

"I thought you said that Frax said it was irreversible," said Lexia.

Alice shrugged. "He did -- but considering how much he lied about other stuff, there's always a chance he might have lied about that too."

"Y'know," Rick mused, "it was a heck of a shock at first...but...I'm sorta getting to like it. I don't think I want it reversing."

"Same here," said John. "Even if I am gonna get sick of hearing how much I look like dad." He grimaced.

Alice offered her brother a consolatory smile. "There are worse people to look like."

"I know."

"How 'bout you, Lex?"

Lexia sighed. "I guess...I don't wanna go back. Not so sure I'm ready to be a grown-up though." A new thought struck her. "Oh God -- they wouldn't send me to high school now, would they?"

Alice pulled a face. "Guess they might."

Lexia groaned. "It **sucks** being the youngest."

"If they make you go, I'll go with you," John volunteered.

Alice blinked. If she didn't know better... Nah. That was ridiculous. Her brother and Lexia weren't...were they? Dismissing the thought as too weird, she returned her attention to the Triumvirate in time to hear Rick ask,

"What about you, Ali?"

"As nice as it would be to go back to being sixteen...no. I can't go back."

"Guess we're decided, then. If they ask."

"They, presumably, being your long suffering-parents?" teased a voice from the doorway.

Alice looked round to see Wes standing in the doorway. "Is it time?" she asked.

Wes nodded. "Yep -- Lucas is ready."

"We'll be right in," Alice promised.

"OK." Wes returned to the kitchen, where this holoscreen conference would take place.

Alice glanced at Rick, John and Lexia. "Ready?"

"'Bout as good as we're gonna get," Rick replied. "Let's get this over with."

"Lead the way, Ali," prompted John.

Alice got to her feet and did as she was asked, wondering vaguely why she felt as though she was leading the Triumvirate to an execution.

In the kitchen, the holoscreen had been set up at one end of the kitchen table. Pictured on it was a man who looked vaguely familiar to Alice. Dimly she recalled spending an afternoon with him once at around about the same time as her ex-father had been dealt with by Eric. Lucas smiled, clearly trying to put them at ease.

Down one side of the table were the 'rents. Her mother, Wes and Jen were sitting while Eric leaned against the worktop behind them. He had his business expression on, which just confirmed to Alice that this was not going to go the way they would have liked.

Quietly, she and the Triumvirate took up the four seats opposite them. After what she'd noted in the living room moments earlier, she wasn't quite so surprised to see John sit down beside Lexia. Nor was she entirely surprised when Rick took the seat between her and Lexia.

"OK," said Lucas, "as we're all here, I'll get down to business. My name's Lucas Kendall, I'm a Major within Time Force and head of the Covert Operations department. Your parents can fill you in later as to what that actually means." He smiled. "I don't want to bore you!"

Alice smiled faintly. The purely female portion of her brain observed that Lucas was cute when he smiled. The still teenage part of her brain pointed out that as a friend of her parents he was definitely off limits. The rest of her appreciated the brief flash of levity in what was bound to be a serious discussion.

"Courtesy of The Master - the Frax clone's creator, we suspect -- you four are in my jurisdiction, so it's up to me to work out what happens next. The first thing I need to tell you is that, I'm afraid, what's been physically done to you -- the information implants and the artificial aging -- is permanent."

Alice sighed and nodded a little.

"Secondly, the morphers. All things considered, it's been decided that you four will retain the morphers. The Master is still a threat and, considering we're still not sure what his ultimate plan is, assuming he'll go after you again is a no contest bet. On that basis, it's not fair to leave you un-armed. As good as your parents are -- and they are exceptional..."

"We'll slip you the five bucks later," Wes murmured, eliciting a ghost of a grin from Eric and a couple of snickers from Rick and John.

"...they can hardly guard you twenty-four/seven," Lucas finished, ignoring Wes' comment.

"I guess that makes sense," said Alice.

"Once The Master's taken care of," Lucas continued, "we'll review the situation -- but for the time being, that's how things stand." He paused. "Any questions?" Silence. "Anyone not liking this plan?" Alice felt sure one of the 'rents would object, but none of them moved. "OK. I'll be in touch with more details about The Master as and when I have them. Kendall out."

And with that, the holoscreen went blank.

_So what now? _Alice wondered.

* * *

_TO BE CONTINUED IN 'NEW RECRUITS'..._


End file.
